As an honest and truthful writer, you will never want to be involved in any form of plagiarism whether intentional or unintentional. Plagiarism is taken as an intellectual offense and leads to severe consequences. You can be terminated from your job if you get caught in plagiarising any content, words or even ideas.
I have always been very conscious about all my writings when ever it comes to the issue of plagiarism. I wanted to establish a good repute in online publishing industry. When I first started up writing I was not very sure of what plagiarism is all about. Once my ezine editor told me that I got some plagiarised content in one of my research report. I was shocked as I was sure that I had not stolen anyone’s work and idea. Then my editor told me that I did not identify the source of one of the quotations I used in my work. That is when I came to know about unintentional plagiarism.
Unintentional plagiarism is when you do not include proper references in your work or in other words careless citation when you borrow some one’s work to support your writing. Although unintentional but it is also taken as an intellectual dishonesty and an offense. To save yourself from unintentional plagiarism you must keep in mind following key points:
- Always use quotation with proper quotation marks.
- Provide proper footnotes for all quotations you use in your work.
- Properly paraphrase if you want to reword / use ideas, facts and opinions of others.
- Provide footnotes for paraphrased content.
- Include all references of the sources you used for your search.
- Never forget to acknowledge the author.