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PLAGIARISM AND CONTENT ETIQUETTE

Assalamu alaykum, Hello and Good day my fellow Steemians, today I will be progressing on with my achievement 3 task which is about plagiarism but before I proceed I would like to thank the Steemit team and its honorable members for creating such a fantastic platform where everyone can express his/her thoughts and ideas which can be of high benefit to others and improve their lives.

Furthermore, I would like to thank one of my mentors on Steemit @vectorshore for guiding me through my journey on Steemit platform and also @cryptokannon for allowing us to know that plagiarism is an illicit behaviour and an act of ingratitude to the real researcher and publisher of a content.

Now let us move to the main business of the day which is all about Plagiarism.

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So let us ask ourselves, what does plagiarism mean?

Plagiarism is simply means an act of making yourself looks like something that in real existence you were not or trying to take credit for something you did not pay for in terms of effort, sweat, research, sleepless nights, consultations and so on. This attitude is unethical and completely frowned at especially in academic settings and one should be strongly advised to stay away from such deceitful act and pilferage.

Plagiarism is a very common thing nowadays among half-baked students both in undergraduate and postgraduate studies whereby a student like to harvest without planting seeds by copy-pasting and dubbing other people’s research work without even leaving a single trace of reference to the original source of the research, some even go to the extent of employing machineries as researchers and writers about a course of study and pay them some token in order to get the job done. This behavior doesn’t seems to help the student or the person in question because it simply means such a student does not understand what research is all about and what he was even given to research about and this actually have negative impact on the academic success of a student in his research at the end.

A lot of negative impacts accompany anyone involving in plagiarism such as lack of understanding of the research topic, wasting of precious time as the supervisor of such a research would never accept such a work once discovered that it is made up of a plagiarized content, also it lowers the reputation of such a researcher among his fellow researchers once discovered and lastly it might even land the plagiarist himself in jail for indulging in such an unethical practice and dirty behavior if real content creator discovers it and decided to take legal sanctions.

So it is strongly advisable to stay away from it, be original to oneself in write-ups and be a good content creator rather than stealing other people’s work and parading it as your own which maybe deadly and disastrous in the end as the case maybe because engaging in plagiarism is akin to calling yourself something that in real world and sense you are totally not.

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"Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own, with or without their consent, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement. All published and unpublished material, whether in manuscript, printed or electronic form, is covered under this definition. Plagiarism may be intentional or reckless, or unintentional. Under the regulations for examinations, intentional or reckless plagiarism is a disciplinary offence". Source.

A Simple Analogy as Regards a Plagiarist
For instance, sweat secretions always accompanies hard works and stress especially the physical types such as sweeping, farmland cultivation, running under scorching hot sun etc., if you as a plagiarist was called to come and lick the sweat boiling out of the body of the person undergoing such a hard work you will refuse to do so and also it would look as a form of bullying to the people present in such a vicinity. The same way you refuse to lick sweat of a hardworking man should be the same way you should stay away from plagiarism because if you engage in plagiarism you are indirectly licking the sweat of a hardworking person which looks dirty and immoral both to the plagiarist and the observers around such an environment.

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HOW TO AVOID PLAGIARISM

There are a lot of certain ways to avoid and desist from plagiarism which are as follows:
Citation, Quotation, Paraphrasing and so on.

Let’s take them one after the other.

Citation
It simply means including the real authors word in your write-ups word for word as it is without changing not even a single letter or word from it and also these words or sentences must be within a quotation marks so as to indicate that these words are not yours by doing you are avoiding plagiarism and you are pointing out that they are not yours and you are giving due respect and credit to the real author.

Any alteration of a word or letter from the author’s words will still be regarded as plagiarism so citation must be done accurately and precisely and also it is recommended and advisable to source a citation with a link so as to serve as reference guide to the reader and also to understand more about your created content.

As regards citation, it can be done for text and images because most images you are seeing around especially on the internet are backed-up by copyright laws so it is highly essential to cite a text or image to avoid being sanctioned legally when copied for academic purposes.

Quotation
Quotation is as simple as 123, it is the application of quotation marks ( “ ) on the copied author’s text or sentences when making citation or making references to author words.

Also a blockquotes symbol ( > ) can also be used in citing references which will highlight the copied text with a vertical line demarcating all the author’s words.

Paraphrasing
It is sometimes used to avoid too much citation in a write-up and it simply means avoid quoting author’s ideas word for word and make some alteration in it but it must still reflect the author’s thought and ideas and it must be cited and the link to the original author’s word must also be sourced to make it look ethical and reputable though in this regard there will be no quotation mark or blockquote.

In conclusion, plagiarism is an unethical practice which should be avoided at all cost and with proper citations, so I would strongly advise every reputable researcher out there to stay away from it and be original in its content creation.

Remark: “I have read and understood the Steemit Etiquette on Steemit Community and will do my best to embrace them”.

Thank you very much for taking out of your precious time to go through my write-up.

If you would like to know about me you can check out here:

This is my Introduction Post

To the attention of @cryptokannon, @juichi, @boss75, @vvarishayy, @psicoparedes , @abuahmad, @ngoenyi and other members of the platform this is my Achievement 3 Post