The boom in the technology has seen a marked change in the way people interact, and has also provided access to information about any given topic you can think of. While easy access to information is a great thing to enhance your awareness and educate yourself regularly, the probability of copying stealing someone else's ideas and presenting them as your own has also been increased exponentially.

To explain further, let's take an example of a person who has limited exposure to internet (you might think of it as highly unlikely in today's world, but where I am from; there is still a large population who do not know how to use a smart phone, or a computer). So back to the case at hand, if a guy does not have access to internet or a smart phone, his ideas and concepts will be based on his personal experience, his environment; and the limited number of people he interacts with. So most of his thinking will be original, while a small amount of his ideas may be bought from his peers, friends and family etc.

Now coming over to the person who has always had an access to internet through a smartphone or a computer; the information available is unlimited. You can find anything and everything on the World Wide Web. And hence, the possibility of borrowing (Stealing) other people's ideas and thoughts. While accessing information to increase your knowledge about a certain topic is always a good thing, stealing or copying that information and trying to present it as your own ideas or thoughts, is definitely not.

So Plagiarism, in simple words, is stealing information or ideas of someone else, and presenting them as one's own ideas or thoughts.

Again, with technology, the types of plagiarism have also grown; from mere copying and pasting of a few lines of text, to stealing more intellectual and scientific types of information. I will try to explain different types of plagiarism in the next few paragraphs.

Complete Plagiarism

Complete Plagiarism is the kind of plagiarism where someone simply gets something done by someone else and presents it as his/her work. For example, a student 'x' asks his/her friend, student 'y' to write an assignment or a paper for himself/herself and submits it as his/her own work." ^Source

Direct Plagiarism

Direct Plagiarism is similar to Complete Plagiarism, however the difference is that instead of copying or submitting the complete work of someone else, one copies certain paragraphs or parts of someone else's paper and presents them as their own." ^Source

Paraphrasing Plagiarism

Paraphrasing Plagiarism is the kind of plagiarism where one takes ideas from someone else's work and presents them after changing a few word or phrases from the original work. The problem here is that, although the words are different, but the idea has been borrowed from someone else's work, without giving due credit to him/her." ^Source

Self Plagiarism

You might get surprised by this one. Although you may have written something yourself in the past and presented it as your work somewhere, if you reproduce the same work (or parts of that work) in future, this also falls into a broader category of plagiarism. The reason for it is that you have already presented those ideas in the past and are now reproducing them as a new idea. This can particularly be an issue if you are a professional writer and write for different clients." ^Source

Patchwork Plagiarism

Patchwork Plagiarism is the kind where one includes certain small phrases or clauses from someone's original work and includes them in their own original work. Such plagiarism is hard to detect, as only very small phrases or parts of sentences are copied into another paper." ^Source

Source-based Plagiarism

Source-based Plagiarism means that a writer does credit his primary source and cites them properly; however, he might have referenced a secondary source during his research, but he does not cite the secondary source to give them credit for their contribution." ^Source

Accidental Plagiarism

Accidental Plagiarism occurs when the writer forgets to cite the source, or does not cite the source correctly, or fails to put quotes around cited text." ^Source

Citations

Based on the above discussion, I would like to conclude that it is really important to avoid plagiarism, and the best way to do it is to cite the source of your information to give them due credit for their original work, which you have benefited from.

I have read and understood the Steemit Etiquette on Steemit Community and will do my best to embrace them.