Plagiarism is a most serious offence, and severe penalties will be imposed on anyone found guilty of it. Students may sometimes offend in this way inadvertently, through inexperience of failure to understand the aims and methods of university study. The attention of students is therefore directed to the following explanation. Plagiarism can be defined as 'the appropriation, by copying, summarising or paraphrasing, of another's ideas or argument, without acknowledgement'. Modes of appropriation are described below.
Copying is the quotation of another author's text, word for word, without acknowledgement.
Such quotation is only permissible when indicated by quotation marks or indentation and acknowledged by exact references. It is not sufficient to make a general attribution or give references for some but not all of the passages copied. However, to summarise others' arguments, ideas or information as though they were one's own is plagiarism. Paraphrasing means putting an author's meaning into different words. This is permissible only if full and exact references are given.