Achievement 3 by @tile7 Task : Content Etiquette

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First and foremost, I understand the value of original and creative content. I understand how important is to be creative on Steemit and write content as you see fit and now as someone else wrote it.

What is Plagiarism?

In my own words, plagiarism is copying and pasting someone else's text and taking credit for it. People invest their time and creativity in their text, so if someone is copying the text, I'm my opinion is just cutting corners. I have learned the hard way that cutting corners is never a good thing in life. Eventually, it will kick you back in your teeth.

Since I write blogs for one of my clients about health and fitness, I understand that the text has to be original, but that is the beauty of it. This allows you to express your creativity and be different than everyone else. You can get ideas from different sources but the text has to be your own.

We have different types of plagiarism, and we will go over them in the text below.

Direct Plagiarism

Direct plagiarism is the word-for-word transcription of a section of someone else’s work. It can be few lines or a whole paragraph. In my opinion, one of the worst type of plagiarism, because you don't come up with any of your own ideas, you just copy someone else's text and get credit for it. Unethical and shameful. It happened to me be few times and that's why I feel this is one of the worst types there is.

Self Plagiarism

This type of plagiarism happens mostly with students, submitting some kind of text that they already submitted. Basically is a copy or partial copy of your own work. And even though you are not damaging anyone in the process, the ethical code should always guide you not to do that.

Accidental Plagiarism

This happens when a person writes something that is too similar to someone else's material. As the name itself says, it is usually accidental. If you are quoting someone, you should always give them the credit they deserve for writing the text.

Complete Plagiarism

This type of plagiarism is labeled as the worst. This is where a person completely copies someone else's material. Imagine that you write a blog and you are very happy with it because you invested a lot of time and research in it. And someone else reads it and posts it as their own. Word for word the entire text. It is unacceptable.

Mosaic Plagiarism

Also, know as "patchwriting" this type can be hard to notice because someone else’s phrases or text is inserted within their own research. Also, they can change the language so it makes it even more difficult. Patchwriting is when a person uses text or phrases from someone else without using a citation. As I said before, you should always list your sources.

Citation

Citation is one of the ways of informing your readers that you used someone else's text. Meaning you used it as your source. It also gives your audience information on where to find the rest of the text if they are interested.

Citation is very important because, with it, we avoid plagiarism, and we give credit to the original content author.

Depending on the discipline, we have 3 of the biggest types of citation:

1. MLA - ( Humanities) Parenthetical (author-page number)
2. APA - ( Psychology, education, social sciences) Parenthetical (author-date)
3. Chicago A and B - (History, Humanities, Sciences, social sciences, humanities) Parenthetical (author-date)

Examples of citation methods:

Example 1: Author or source is written directly after the citation.

"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

From The Poems of Dylan Thomas, published by New Directions. Copyright © 1952, 1953

Example 2: Author or source is written in the footer of the blog or document and it's linked from citation with a number.

"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light." [1]

[...]

[1] From The Poems of Dylan Thomas, published by New Directions. Copyright © 1952, 1953

As a writer, I do come across these problems almost on a weekly basis. It is important to stay original and give credit to people that are invested their time to write original content.

I hope that we can all strive to be better and more creative in our writings.

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

Hope you all are having a great start of the week.

Kind regards,

Tile.