The Common Types of Plagiarism

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Our graduate students were generous enough to donate their statements of purpose to this site, with the hope that they will aid you in your own application process, by giving you a feel for the general structure, type of content, and level of detail that are expected. We ask that you please be respectful and aware that the following statements are their original work. Because these statements are openly published on our site, it will be easy for admissions committees to know if your own work plagiarizes them.  We have provided some common types of plagiarism below, adapted from the Bowdoin College website (source here, with examples). 

 

Direct plagiarism: Direct Plagiarism is the word-for-word transcription of a section of someone else’s work, without attribution and without quotation marks. The deliberate plagiarism of someone else's work is unethical, academically dishonest, and grounds for disciplinary actions, including expulsion (or revocation of admittance to a program). 

 

Mosaic plagiarism: Mosaic Plagiarism occurs when a student borrows phrases from a source without using quotation marks, or finds synonyms for the author’s language while keeping to the same general structure and meaning of the original. Sometimes called “patch writing,” this kind of paraphrasing, whether intentional or not, is academically dishonest and punishable – even if you footnote your source!

 

Accidental plagiarism: Accidental Plagiarism occurs when a person neglects to cite their sources, or misquotes their sources, or unintentionally paraphrases a source by using similar words, groups of words, and/or sentence structure without attribution.  Lack of intent does not absolve the student of responsibility for plagiarism. Cases of accidental plagiarism are taken as seriously as any other plagiarism and are subject to the same range of consequences as other types of plagiarism.