Q. What's the difference between intentional plagiarism and unintentional plagiarism?
Answer
Intentional plagiarism is:
- Copying someone's words or ideas without citing them, in order to pass them off as your own.
- In other words, cheating.
Unintentional plagiarism is:
- Accidentally leaving off the required citation(s) because you don't understand the rules of citation and plagiarism.
- Sometimes students don't realize they need to include a citation for any information they learned from a source, even if they are using their own words to paraphrase the information they learned.
Visit this site on plagiarism prevention to see a full description of unintentional plagiarism.
See the APA Help guide for citation examples to avoid plagiarism.
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