Plagiarism can take several forms, each of which
is avoidable.
Intentional plagiarism occurs when a student chooses to copy someone else’s work exactly, or chooses to present another person’s ideas, conclusions, or findings as his or her own. This could be material copied from a book, journal or website; it could also be another student’s schoolwork or the work of a group, such as lab results, an English essay or computer programming code. Purchasing or copying a paper written by someone else, or turning in a paper that has been rewritten by a parent or tutor also fall in this category.
Unintentional plagiarism is usually the result of poor scholarly procedure: a student neglects to follow proper citation methods. This includes the accidental omission of references to “borrowed” material, improper paraphrasing, forgetting the origin of something that you read or heard, or referring to a source within the text of your paper that is not listed in the bibliography.
Self-plagiarism occurs when a student turns in all or part of a document or project that was previously submitted in another class. Students wishing to use previously written work should speak to the current teacher to determine how that work should be incorporated into a new assignment.
Whether intentional or unintentional, incidents of plagiarism are subject to policies put forth in the
Menlo School Student Handbook.
In recent years there have been several cases of plagiarism in the news. Click the links below to read stories about adults who used or published works that were partially plagiarized:
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