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Looking At Plagiarism In A Different Way

Using something that has been said before in one personsperson s writing and then putting it in your own writing, is considered plagiarism. All throughout school in English classes, I remember talking about plagiarism and being warned of the consequences that come from plagiarizing. This is something that many students have issues with getting accused of doing. If you are accused of plagiarizing you are going to get in trouble for it because if someone else has said it before, it is believed that you should not be able to use that idea in order to help you with what you are writing. I believe that what people consider to be plagiarism might not be true and that it is looked at as a worse thing that than it really is; not only that if someone does use your work it is not to cheat and steal your idea, but it is because they agree with what you are saying and want to add to that idea in their own writing. I know that obviously taking someone else s complete piece of writing and saying it is your own is not ok and should not be ignored. What I am saying is that if someone uses someone else s idea and builds off of it or just agrees with what the person is saying and doesn t copy it word for word, it should not be considered plagiarism. Colleges, High Schools, and Middle schools have thought of plagiarism as a big deal and warned students about it forever for hundreds of years. Many different things in writing are considered plagiarism and when a student does these things it is considered academic dishonesty and they usually suffer from a suspension or expulsion (Howard). When student s plagiarize it is usually assumed that either those students don't appreciate academic textual values and therefore deliberately

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Callander 2 submit work that is not their own; others don't understand academic citation conventions and therefore plagiarize inadvertently. (Howard) It is usually assumed that the student is intentionally copying the work to make it easier for them with their writing. The degree of punishment for plagiarism is much larger than needed like Martin wrote, who is damaged if a student plagiarizes copyrighted material? (622) A friend of mine from high school got suspended before because she was accused of plagiarism along with 3 other people in her class. Did all of these students really plagiarize in their papers? No, I don t believe they did. Tthey had traces of other people s ideas in their papers and they were patch writing, which is when someone is "copying from a source text and then deleting some words, altering grammatical structures, or plugging in one-for-one synonym-substitutes" (Howard, A Plagarism Pentimento) My point with this example, is these students should not have had such harsh punishment for this and it should not be considered as a form of plagiarism. The way that plagiarism is viewed should be reconsidered. When someone is using someone else s idea from their writing and changing it around and saying it in their own words in their own writing or patch writing it is in a way a complement. If someone takes the basics of an idea and tries to use it, they are showing that they like that idea. Using someone else s idea is showing them that it was a good idea and that it is going to be useful to another person to say what they are trying to say. Another reason I don t think using someone else s idea is a bad thing, is if someone does use your idea then they are most likely talking about that same thing that you
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Callander 3 are talking about and trying to tell people the same thing you are. A lot, of the time thatMost of the time when students use other people s ideas it is also not because they are trying to steal them, but because they are not sure how they are suppose tosupposed to use citations. In my experience, I was not taught how I should properly use different kinds of citations in different works until I was in the 12th grade. I can understand why people would view using other people s work as a bad thing because obviously you want the credit for what you have done. If a person were to copy and paste someone s work word for word, that to me doesthen they do deserve some sort of punishment., in In that case to me, the level of punishment for that given for plagiarism already is reasonable. When people are writing, it is suppose tosupposed to be their own work so I can also understand how people can disagree with me and say that redoing what someone else is saying is still considered plagiarism. People may also disagree with me and say that it is not a complement when someone takes ideas from your work, and uses it in their own, and they then want the credit for that work. I am sure that everyone has once in their life seen someone doing something that they thought was a good idea or wearing something that they got an idea from seeing., to To me, seeing someone else s idea and wanting to use it in your own is in a way is the same thing. What I am saying is that certain things that are considered plagiarism should not be thought of as plagiarism and should be reconsidered. It is not an insult if someone reuses your ideas and wants to use them to make the same point that you are making. If this idea of patch writing is no longer considered plagiarism it would
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Callander 4 probably help out a lot of students. The punishments for plagiarism are too harsh for how strict the rules that define plagiarism are; so reconsidering the guidelines that define plagiarism is a good idea. Suspension of a student who is using someone s idea to prove the same point, but rewording it is too harsh. Students could have thought of an idea themselves and not have known that it was already out there. Unless the student has copied something word for word from another writer under their name, they do not deserve to receive these harsh punishments.
Comment [C9]: Maybe add one more sentence to close this paper so it won t be so abrupt.

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Works Cited
Howard, Rebecca Moore. "A Plagarism Pentimento." Journal of Teaching Writing (1993): 233-46. Howard, Rebecca Moore. "Plagarisms, Authorships, and the Academic Death Penalty." College English. Vol. 57. National Council of Teachers of English, 1995. 7 vols. 788. Martin, R.G. "Plagarism and Oringinality: Some Remedies." The English Journal 60.5 (1971): 621-25+628.