Tips for the Plagiarist

Plagiarism has long been the bane of faculty in the academic world, and from our perspective here at nHumanities student plagiarism is increasing. The internet makes it so easy, and it is such a temptation to cut and paste without fussing with citations.

Alex Halavais, an assistant professor in the School of Informatics at the University at Buffalo, has put together a tongue-in-cheek guide for plagiarists entitled "How to Cheat Good." Of course, Halavais would prefer students not cheat at all, but like most teachers he felt compelled to offer suggestions on how to improve the final product--even when that product is an ineptly plagiarized essay.

My personal favorite:

When you copy things from the web into Word . . . don’t just “Edit > Paste” it into your document. When I am reading a document in black, Times New Roman, 12pt, and it suddenly changes to blue, Helvetica, 10pt (yes, really), I’m going to guess that something odd may be going on. This seems to happen in about 1% of student work turned in, and periodically makes me feel like becoming a hermit.

Here's the link to "How to Cheat Good." (Be sure to read a few of the 225 comments -- as of this posting -- to his article.)