Plagiarism Policy

Pupils are challenged to fulfill their potential in academic work. Therefore the School takes a strong stand against plagiarism. Plagiarism is the act of taking and using the thoughts, writings and other inventions of another as one’s own work. Unreferenced work taken from sources such as the Internet, books and interviews with individuals will be regarded as plagiarised.

It is an intellectual theft, no different in motivation from the theft of material objects.

Penalties for plagiarism will be appropriate to the offence and will range from the loss of an assignment mark for petty infringements through to Headmaster’s detentions and letters of warning for grosser violations.

What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined in The Concise Oxford Dictionary as  ‘the act of taking and using the thoughts, writings, inventions etc of another person as one’s own’ . Basically, it’s theft. If you don’t quote or reference ideas that you borrow, you’re stealing.

How does it work?
Original:
 *  ‘JM Coetzee is an award-winning writer who has garnered dozens of international awards, but his work is arcane and aimed at an intellectual audience. This does not endear him to some.‘ 

Inserting a phrase or sentence from another text into your writing, without citing your source.


 * Coetzee is a great writer but his work is arcane and aimed an intellectual audience. Despite this...

Transferring whole paragraphs or essays into your piece of writing.


 * As I see it, JM Coetzee is an award-winning writer who has garnered dozens of international awards, but his work is arcane and aimed at an intellectual audience. This does not endear him to some...

Blending words, phrases etc into your writing so that the work is close to the original. You can see in the example below that the writer is carefully inserting words, changing word order and adding suffixes to create the impression that he has worked at this all on his own.


 * Coetzee is I think a fantastic author but his arcane work troubles alot [sic] of people. Personally I respect his work and it should garner many awards but is arcaneness does not endear him to me, possibly because I do not form part of his intellectual audience. 

Yes, we know
Yes, we know when you are plagiarising. Overnight a pupil produces a sophisticated style and set of ideas at a level he has never achieved before, and cannot explain or define all the ideas he has used. You can also see from the last example above that such a writer tends to use words like ‘fantastic’ and errors like ‘ alot’ that just don’t fit into the style of the rest of the writing.

What’s more, we are able to find many of the original texts via Internet plagiarism search sites.

But why can't I use their words? They said it so well
Well, you can, but you need to reveal your sources, not steal from them and pretend you have transformed yourself from a G10 pupil to a highly educated, third-year university student. The purpose of school is for you to learn how to think for yourself.

The best way to research is:
 * Read widely and note down important ideas and quotes.
 * Put the main sources aside and begin writing your piece, integrating the quotes and ideas, which you carefully reference, but using your own style and structure.

How about the Internet?
There are hundreds of millions of pages on the Internet. And they’re all waiting for you, just begging to be used. A snip here, a paste there, and your work is done. This all makes it very tempting for you.

But the point is, you’re not in school to show how clever you are at fooling teachers. You’re here to develop your ideas.

The Internet is a great tool but, ultimately, when you sit down, it is up to you to plan, structure and create your work.

Being a lazy plagiarist won’t get you far in life because soon you’ll be found out.

People who have been found out
Here are a few recent examples. These are actual examples, but the names and locations have been changed:

Name: Kenneth Sawyer
 * Position: journalist for newspaper in Cape Town.
 * Offence: copied out information from various websites for his business and property articles, attaching his own name to the articles.
 * Punishment: fired

Name: Paul Vilikazi
 * Positions: top writer for various local newspapers and magazines, author of several books.
 * Offence: found to have copied out paragraphs of a British writer’s book into his own book.
 * Punishment: fired from his highly-paid job, new book release scrapped, reputation tarnished.

Name: Janet Taylor
 * Position: new editor of local lifestyle magazine
 * Offence: discovered to have copied out websites into her own column in magazine, passing them off as her own
 * Punishment: Fired

Name: Jonathan Loren
 * Position: 3rd year student at Wits University
 * Offence: handed in assignment essay with plagiarised extracts.
 * Punishment: Given 0% for assignment and official warning. Repeat offence would see him expelled from year.

As you can see, getting into the habit of plagiarising can get you into serious trouble sooner or later. You may escape once but it does catch up with you because somebody eventually notices.

Help from friends
What if you chat to a friend or family member and they provide ideas for you? That’s fine, but this must lead you to choose one of three options:


 * 1) Where the information is very general and likely to have been known anyway, no referencing is necessary.
 * 2) Where the information is more specialised or original, and you know you could not have thought of it yourself, you need to quote their exact words and reference the speaker.
 * 3) Where you do not want to quote the exact words, follow the following approach:  ‘As my mother, Jane Scully, suggests, Shakespeare was the original plagiarist, a man who borrowed his ideas from anyone and anywhere.’ In this case you are using your own wording but are including the original ideas from your mother.

Inserting short quotes

 * Volcanoes are ‘nature’s pyrotechnical playthings’, as Edward Scissors says in ‘The Volcano’.
 * Volcanoes are, according to the June 2005 edition of National Geographic, ‘nature’s pyrotechnical playthings’.

Inserting long quotes
Here, the long quote is indented and the title given afterward.


 * A good example of humorous writing is the work of Gus Silber:


 * According to recent scientific surveys of a bunch of people standing around a pool with beers in their hands, many pool-owning householders neglect elementary pool maintenance because it sounds like such a schlep, and in any case, everyone knows that the main reason for spending R30 000 on a swimming-pool is the fact that it saves you having to fill your dog’s drinking-bowl with water every few days. (Braaivleis of the Vanities)

At Beaulieu we discourage the use of long quotes, although there may be occasions when they are necessary. It is far better to insert short quotes into your work.

Reference Lists
If you have used anyone else’s ideas in your project, you need to create a reference list at the end. Write the word ‘References’ on top of a new page, to be added after your project. Below that list all books, then magazine titles, then websites, in the following fashion. Each section should be alphabetical. Every punctuation mark should be in place as follows. (You need not reference individuals but they should be cited in your writing.)

References

Books
 * Yardly, H. (1994) A History of the braaivleis, sunny skies and other South African symbols of the good life. Penguin: London.
 * Zephyr, H (1991). The Western Canon. Pan University Press: New York.

Magazines and other publications
 * National Geographic: September 2004. P34-67.
 * The Star: 23 January 2005. P12.

Websites
 * www.fifa.com
 * www.soccer.com

School Penalties for Plagiarism
These will range from marks being deducted to more serious consequences such as letters of warning, depending on the severity of the offence.

Ideas from this document taken from Georgetown University website.