Plagiarism is stealing someone else s ideas or writing to pass off as your own. Self-plagiarism is taking school work for which you have already received academic credit and turning it in again. In both cases, you are cheating by trying to receive credit that you do not deserve.
Plagiarism is a serious form of academic fraud.
It is dishonest, lazy, and also risky, because students who plagiarize are frequently caught. If you are found guilty of plagiarism, you will face penalties ranging from receiving an F for the particular assignment or class to expulsion from Dalhousie. A student convicted of plagiarizing in an English class in 1996, for instance, failed the class, was put on academic probation by the Senate Discipline Committee, and will carry a record of the incident on his Dalhousie transcript. Because these penalties are severe, and because you can be found guilty of plagiarism even if your intent was not dishonest, you should familiarize yourself with the proper methods for using and citing source materials in every discipline in which you are working. Always cite your source when using direct quotations.