Some examples of plagiarism have been adapted by Kingsborough and included in their plagiarism guide for the Honors Program. These examples work just as well for the general student population:
Imagine that a student wants to use information from the following passage, on pg. 102 of Kernan, Alvin. The Playwright as Magician. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Print. The entirety of the quotation the student wants to use is here:
“From time to time this submerged or latent theater in Hamlet becomes almost overt. It is close to the surface in Hamlet's pretense of madness, the "antic disposition" he puts on to protect himself and prevent his antagonists from plucking out the heart of his mystery.”
Plagiarism through unacknowledged direct quotation:
Plagiarized example:
Almost all of Shakespeare's Hamlet can be understood as a play about acting and the theatre. For example, there is Hamlet's pretense of madness, the "antic disposition" that he puts on to protect himself and prevent his antagonists from plucking at the heart of his mystery.
DOC: Plagiarism. Student Guidelines revised 2014
Comment:
Aside from an opening sentence loosely adapted from the original and reworded more simply, this entire passage is taken almost word for word from the source. The few small alterations of the source do not relieve the writer of the responsibility to attribute these words to their original author. A passage from a source may be worth quoting at length if it makes a point precisely or elegantly. In such cases, copy the passage exactly, place it in quotation marks, and cite the author.
Plagiarism through using selected phrases without proper acknowledgement (lifted passages are underlined):
Plagiarized example:
Almost all of Shakespeare's Hamlet can be understood as a play about acting and the theatre. For example, in Act 1, Hamlet adopts a pretense of madness that he uses to protect himself and prevent his antagonists from discovering his mission to revenge his father's murder.
Comment:
This passage, in content and structure, is taken wholesale from the source. Although the writer has rewritten much of the sentence, and fewer phrases are lifted verbatim from the source, this is a clear example of plagiarism. Inserting even short phrases from the source into a new sentence still requires placing quotations around the borrowed words and citing the author.
Plagiarism through paraphrasing the text but maintaining the basic paragraph and sentence structure:
Plagiarized example:
Almost all of Shakespeare's Hamlet can be understood as a play about acting and the theatre. For example, in Act 1, Hamlet pretends to be insane in order to make sure his enemies do not discover his mission to revenge his father's murder.
Comment:
Almost nothing of Alvin Kernan's original language remains in this rewritten paragraph. However, the key idea, the choice and order of the examples and even the basic structure of the original sentences are all taken from the source. Although it would no longer be necessary to use quotation marks, it would absolutely be necessary to place a citation at the end of this paragraph to acknowledge that the content is not original. Better still would be to acknowledge the author in the text by adding a phrase such as "Alvin Kernan argues..."and then citing the source at the end of the paragraph.
Adapted from: Academic Integrity at Princeton. Princeton University, 2011. Web. 6 Nov. 2014. http://www.princeton.edu:80/~compub/pubs/rrr/63-69.htm>