*Yes. Plagiarism is theft. Yes. It can be illegal. And Yes. You should care!
Author’s Note: Most of the information contained within this article has been obtained through my years of experience in academic and professional settings, with no particular source to be cited. However, I have included Wikipedia and Oxford University under the “Sources” section at the bottom, because they were used to confirm that my assertions were accurate, and because they are excellent sources for anyone looking to understand this topic more fully.
* Plagiarism — The act of stealing the intellectual property of another person or institution. *
That word has quite an impact upon us write-righters who take pride in our work, staying up all night to run references and Google the correct way to cite a source, because we find the idea of plagiarizing someone else’s intellectual property, even inadvertently, to be appalling, and when we discover that another so-called “writer” has thrown ethics to the wind like they’re nothing more than a handful of dust, we are sickened, angered, even personally offended for the person or institution that has been ripped off.
Sadly, there are many individuals who do not feel the way that we…
