ABSTRACT
Deliberate plagiarism includes getting someone else to write your essay for you and then saying it’s yours or copying chunks of text out of a book or from the Internet, with the deliberate intention of deceiving the reader into thinking they are in your own words. Why would people engage in deliberate plagiarism? Perhaps out of laziness and a disregard for the requirements and expectations of university study. Perhaps when it seems pointless to restate less expertly what someone else has said well. Perhaps because the copied material is in better English. Or perhaps because of the mistaken belief that everyone else is doing it and getting away with it. It would be as well to treat this claim with the same scepticism as you would the claim that ‘everyone’ is shoplifting or that ‘everyone’ is using hard drugs. It is not everyone, nor does the fact that some people are doing it make it right or safe. And it’s your choice. Leaving aside the very serious penalties for plagiarism – failing your module, losing the credits, perhaps even being expelled from your course – think back to your aspirations when you came to university. Did they include cheating your way to a qualification you are supposed to gain through study and skills development? Will you respect yourself if you know you never really earned your degree? Will you be able to cope in your career if you have ducked out of learning key skills by cheating?
