1. Plagiarism and Copyright
What is Plagiarism?

You've probably used the Web to do research for your homework assignments at one time or another. You may even have cut-and-pasted information from the Web into papers that you were writing for class. If you copy someone else's words and paste them into your documents without giving credit to the original author, it's called plagiarism .

Plagiarism is theft. Using someone's work or ideas and passing them off as your own by not giving credit to the authors is legally and ethically wrong. You could even be taken to court over it . Famous cases involving plagiarism involve authors Stephen E. Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin.

In college, Plagiarism is an academic offense subject to academic penalties. Click here to read Westminster College's Statement on Academic Honesty.