If someone wants to write a book and begins doing it, then eventually it gets published, but later 1 sentence in it is found to be identical to another book that was prior to it, is that plagiarism? What if the author really did phrase it that way by chance? Interesting question eh? How many sentences does it take to make a plagiarism case!
I guess it depends what the sentence is. If it's something containing significant content, yes, if it's a general sentence that everyone uses one in a while and isn't specific to what the topic is, it'll be hard to prove. In theory, no two people will ever word the same sentence in quite the same way. That's what we're taught at university. Questions like that come up very often. I once talked about an essay with a friend over msn messenger, and we wrote our essays separately, but the lecturer found one sentence that was similar (not the same, mind you) and we got put down for "collusion".
Isn't plagerism if you don't reference your sources properly ?, Significant sentences are to be sourced, thats what I was told.
Yes... if you're giving information, explaining something, etc, and you did not come to that information or conclusion yourself, you must reference.
shewolf, thats harsh. our lecturers encorage us to discuss our work as long as we do it sepratly. The university even has message boards for each subject that is partually for this purpose
Well, at first she asked us straight out "so who plagiarised whom?" :bugeye: When we just stared at her blankly, she explained what she was talking about. We told her we'd discussed the essay - which took about an hour of arguing with her, she agreed to bring it down to collusion. It was ridiculous.
what idocy, potentually ejecting a student from the university (which after all is the penelty for plagurisium) for doing exactly what every achademic in the world does on a regular basis, consulting with a college Its almost as stupid as what my lecture told me. She was saying that if there are statements or sentances which she regards as odd she copies them and dumps them into google to see what comes out. I said to her after class that its quite possable she would find stuff similar to my work online because i come HERE all the time and further more have even used my assignments sometimes to back up arguments here (why should i do the same work twice after all?). Well her comment was i should be careful because if someone else came here and copied my work i would be liable for distributing papers. I turned to her and said "what the hell, I hold achademic rights to publish my own work if i see fit, if it was in a book and it was plagurised not only would that be not my fault but i would have legal recorse for that plagurisium'" Her responce was "I know, if i as a lecturer do the same thing then all blame falls on the student for copying the work, its because your a student that you can get in trouble over it" How rediculas is that?
