With the growth of online websites and content, lots of instances of plagiarism have been noticed. Plagiarism is an act when someone copies the original content and makes it his own. It’s not only about copying content but also copying lyrics of songs or even someone’s ideas. It is somewhat similar to the cheating done by kids during their exams in schools. Plagiarism not only involves copying content from websites but also includes copying from books, articles, emails etc. Plagiarism is offense and is not considered to be ethical. Plagiarism also refers to copying your own content from one publication and using it in another publication. When doing so, make sure that your ideas remain same but the sentence framing and usage of words should completely differ from the original one. Plagiarism word came from the Latin word ‘plagiarius’ which means stealing somebody else’s work.

There has been a lot of growth in the numbers of freelance writers, blog writers, website content writers, copy editors etc. All should remain away from this copyright offence and try to put their original ideas while writing.  Though plagiarism is still not a criminal or a civil offense but with growing awareness of intellectual property rights, it can come out as a law soon.

It should be the responsibility of all authors and content writers to mention their source of information (if they have taken some idea from somewhere else) in the section of internal citation in their work. Giving credits to the actual source makes your reputation as a reliable writer.

For students pursuing academic and journalism courses, understanding the ill effects of plagiarism is a must as without knowing them they can land up in big troubles. Before submitting any research or scholar work, you must get it double checked with peers and copy editors to make sure that you have not committed any kind of plagiarism even accidentally.

Lots of tools and software are also available on the internet today which you can use to check if there is some sentence in your writing, which has been copied from a different website. These tools and software come very handy. Some of them are paid software and some can even be accessed free of cost. There is also an excellent website ‘plagiarism-removal.com’ which can assist you by providing more details on plagiarism issues and tips and techniques which you can use to stay away from this unethical offense.