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What to do when you encounter plagiarism: student work

This post is for editors who suspect that they might have come across deliberate or accidental plagiarism, or are concerned that they are doing “too much” and thus causing their client to unwittingly engage in plagiarism. By sharing how I approach this, and asking for comments, I hope I can gather together a resource of best practices for other editors / proofreaders.

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is, at its most basic, the act of passing someone else’s work off as your own. It usually involves copying someone else’s work, text, content, however you want to describe it, without pointing out that you’ve copied it or referencing it back to the original work.

In my work, plagiarism is found most often in student work and business marketing content such as websites and blogs. This post is about student work, and I discuss business content in another post.

Plagiarism in academic work

Plagiarism is, unfortunately, rife in academic work. You can kind of understand it: students are under a lot of pressure, and overseas students in particular can have a lot of financial pressure from their funders to return home with a good degree and pick up a high-level job. With courses over-subscribed and A-levels often not preparing students for the rigours of academic work, the student may not understand that they are not supposed to use other people’s work unattributed, although universities do provide them with reams of paper and things to sign which are intended to explain and prevent plagiarism.

I tend to find two kinds of plagiarism, deliberate and accidental:

Deliberate plagiarism

I’ve come across some pretty shocking examples of deliberate plagiarism in my work. This includes sections marked in a different colour, with a note in the covering email: “Can you please rewrite the sections I’ve highlighted”. More heartrending are the examples where the author says to me, “My English is not good enough to rewrite the parts from other authors, please help me to rewrite them”. But I can’t.

Deliberate or accidental plagiarism

I often come across direct quotations used as if they are the author’s own words. Unfortunately, to the experienced editor, it becomes all-too-clear when a direct quotation is being used without being referenced. Here are some markers of the unattributed block of text that I’ve found:

The language changes subtly: more multi-syllable words, different kinds of linking words used
The standard of the English becomes markedly higher, with no corrections needed to be made (even if you miss these as you go along, the island of white in a sea of coloured corrections and highlights stands out as you look at the page)
The language changes from American to British English or vice versa (many students are inconsistent in their spellings, but a block of the opposite type of English is a real giveaway)
The font, size or colour of the text, or the indentation, line spacing or justification changes – a classic case of copy and paste

Sometimes you can give the student the benefit of the doubt here. Maybe they meant to rewrite and reference and forgot. Maybe they didn’t realise that they couldn’t use blocks of text like this. But it doesn’t mean that it can go unmarked.

Accidental plagiarism

I would count accidental plagiarism as a case where a student who has clearly rewritten ideas taken from other texts and referenced direct quotations and such ideas misses off a reference after a piece of text that is clearly from someone else. Of course, the cases above may be accidental, too, but they do still need to be addressed, as does the odd missed reference.

Plagiarism by the editor

There’s another form of plagiarism which the editor must resist themselves: rewriting so much of the text that it’s the editor who has in effect written the text, and not the student. I talk about how I avoid that below.

What to do when you encounter plagiarism in student work

It’s our duty as decent and principled editors to flag up plagiarism when we find it and help our student customers to realise how they should be referencing and when they’ve made a mistake. It is not our job to rewrite text or make so many corrections and suggestions that we have in effect written the essay ourselves. There are plenty of dodgy proofreading companies out there that will do that (and essay writing companies that will sell students ready-written essays), but as a decent editor, you should not be involved in those sorts of practices.

If you don’t flag up these problems, it is likely that the essay will be run through the university’s plagiarism software and that will flag them up to serious effect (many students know this, and that’s why they might ask us to rewrite sections for them). If you’re concerned about returning work to a student with plagiarism noted and discussed, remember that you’re saving them from possible penalties or even expulsion from their course if they continue to plagiarise and attempt to pass others’ work off as their own, even if you’re not concerned about helping people to obtain qualifications fraudulently.

Here’s what I do to avoid helping the student to commit plagiarism by passing off my own words as their own:

I always work with Track Changes turned on and instruct the student to check each change and accept or reject it themselves. Yes, I know they can press “Accept all changes”, but I send them instructions on how to work with Track Changes that don’t include this option.
I will delete, add and rearrange only if either the words are all correct but the order is incorrect, or the order is correct but the tenses are incorrect. You soon get a feel for the light touch needed to bring writing up to a clear output without rewriting.
If a sentence is obviously wrong in terms of content, I will insert a comment and advise the student to check the correctness of the content.
If a sentence is so garbled as to not make sense, I will insert a comment and ask the student to rewrite it.
If a sentence could mean one of two things, I will insert a comment to suggest the two opposite meanings and ask which they mean.
I am clear in my terms and conditions on this website and in my initial text to the student that this is how I operate.
When dealing with a bibliography, I will make small amendments to isolated errors in punctuation or order, usually up to about 10% of entries. If more than 10% of entries are not formatted according to the rules the student has sent me, or are completely chaotic, I stop editing the bibliography and insert a comment to remind the student that the bibliography is supposed to demonstrate their skill and knowledge, so they must work on it themselves.

Here’s what I do to stop the student plagiarising:

If I find the odd missed reference for a direct quotation, I will highlight the offending quotation and insert a comment reading “Reference required”.
If I find the odd obvious copy and paste which has not been referenced, I will highlight the offending sentences and insert a comment reading “Reference required”.
If I find an isolated substantial section which has clearly or even possibly been lifted from another source, I usually copy a few sentences and pop it in a Google search to see whether I can find the original. Then I will highlight the section and insert a comment along the lines of “This appears to come from another source without being referenced. Mark as a direct quotation and reference, or rewrite in your own words and reference”.
If I find several substantial sections like the above, I will stop editing and write to the student advising that much of the text has been lifted from other sources without being referenced, this is plagiarism and they need to address the issues.
If I find anything more than the odd missed reference to a direct quotation, I will mention the referencing issue in my covering email when returning the work, to ensure that the student is reminded to reference all direct and indirect quotations (thanks to Liam for his comment below reminding me that I do this).

What if the student says it’s OK to rewrite their work?

Sometimes when I return work to a student advising that it’s risking plagiarism to have me continue working on their text (usually because of the level of changes I’m having to make to the text rather than lifting work from other writers), they will come back to me to say that their supervisor / tutor says that it’s OK to do this amount of rewriting.

If they do this, I request that their tutor writes to me telling me it is OK to engage in this level of correction. I require this letter to be on headed paper, signed by the supervisor and scanned in and emailed to me. This hasn’t happened very often; when it has, I have contacted the supervisor to check, and continued with the work. I have saved the scanned letter alongside my copy of the student’s work in case of any comeback.

This article has outlined what I do when I encounter plagiarism in student work. I have resources on this website about plagiarism (listed below) which I am happy for you to reference if you need to (but not copy!). If you have other ways of overcoming this issue, please do submit a comment!

Illusion or delusion?

03 Mar

What’s the difference between an illusion and a delusion. In this post in my series of Troublesome Pairs, I’ll explain it to you …

An illusion is a false or deceptive appearance, impression or perception: “He gave the illusion of being able to touch-type: in fact, he stared at the keyboard and typed with two fingers”; “The illusion produced by the smoke and mirrors was very convincing and she thought that she could see the magician in two places at the same time.”

A delusion is an internally produced belief that is not in line with what is generally accepted to be the truth: “He fell prey to the delusion that he was a magnet for women, but put them off with his cheesy chat-up lines”.

You can think of it like this: an illusion is imposed from the outside, while a delusion arises from the inside. I hope that helps!

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.

Dryer or drier?

24 Feb

A commonly confused pair, this is in fact confusing when you start to look into it, too! Perhaps that’s why I’ve left it until now!

Drier is the comparative of the adjective dry. So, today it didn’t rain very much, so it was drier than yesterday, when it poured with rain all day. This white wine is drier than that white wine. Liz’s laundry has been on the washing line in her North-facing garden all day and is no drier than when she put it out. You get the idea.

A dryer is a device which dries things. So you have a tumble dryer or a hair dryer. Simple.

But: drier is also an alternative or variant spelling of dryer. How disappointing. But we don’t need to use it as such, do we? Let’s keep those two alternatives going strong, and get our laundry drier by using our tumble dryer!

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.

Faint or feint?

17 Feb

Here we go with another Troublesome Pair. We have a slight spelling issue going on with the second of these two, as well, just to add extra value!

Faint as an adjective means barely perceptible, slight, and in medical terms, close to losing consciousness: “Even the faint whiff of eggs was enough to make me feel faint”. The verb to faint indicates a sudden loss of consciousness: “She saw the horrible sight and fainted, falling to the floor, out cold”. Faint hearted – means lacking conviction or courage – another of our extensions into metaphor.

A feint (not a fient) is a pretended or deceptive thrust or blow in the sports of boxing fencing (or in general fighting). “I feinted a punch to the left and ran around him as he ducked”. It is also, in my favoured usage, the term for paper which has been printed with faint lines to give a guide for handwriting – you will see “Narrow feint” or “Wide feint” printed on the front of notebooks or pads of paper.

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.

Bimonthly or semimonthly / semi-monthly? Biweekly or semiweekly / semi-weekly?

10 Feb

I covered biennial or biannually quite a while ago now, but Guy K Haas commented on my index to all of these Troublesome Pairs that I should cover bimonthly or semimonthly, and biweekly or semiweekly. And so I shall.

However, one caveat before we begin: Try not to use these. There is so much confusion about words like these, that it is almost always so much better to write “Every two weeks” or “Twice a week” rather than using the more complex term. After all, these terms are usually used when one is scheduling something, and you don’t want your scheduling to go awry, do you!

Bimonthly actually means, in the dictionary (all of them), taking place or appearing twice a month … or every two months. So that’s no use, is it!

We find the same issue with biweekly – it can mean either (both) taking place or appearing twice a week … or every two weeks. Useless, again!

Moving on, semi-monthly and semi-weekly do mean occurring or appearing twice a month / twice a week (and notice that hyphen: that’s a bit annoying in itself, isn’t it!).

So, my recommendation: leave these well alone. State the exact times the whatever it is will be doing whatever it does. “My magazine is going to come out every two months” – “Oh, mine’s coming out twice a month, or every two weeks”. Job done.

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.

2 Comments

Posted by Liz Dexter on February 10, 2014 in Errors, Language use, Troublesome pairs, Writing

Tags: errors, language, learning, writing

Slight or sleight?

03 Feb

This one was suggested by Matthew, Mr Libro. I’ve got to the point where I can’t remember whether I’ve covered a particular confusing word pair or not (see the link at the bottom of this post for the index to them all) but it is indeed a new one …

Slight is an adjective meaning not very sturdy or strong, or inconsiderable, small: “The rider was so slight that they feared he could not control the larger horse”; “There is a slight problem with your use of their and there, have a look at Liz’s Troublesome Pairs posts”. A slight (noun) is a kind of insult which is based around not showing someone the appropriate level of respect or attention: “He never bothered to read her blog posts, and she felt this slight keenly”.

Sleight is only actually ever found as part of the phrase ‘sleight of hand‘. This means manual dexterity, usually in the context of someone doing magic/conjuring tricks. By extension, it has also come to mean skilful deception of any kind, as more of a metaphor.

“He gained a slight advantage by employing sleight of hand and misleading the other runners as to the direction to take. However, as it was only a slight advantage, they soon caught up and beat him”.

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.

2 Comments

Posted by Liz Dexter on February 3, 2014 in Errors, Language use, Troublesome pairs, Writing

Tags: errors, language, learning, writing

Procrastinate or prevaricate?

27 Jan

Welcome back to the Troublesome Pairs after a long break full of posts on business and Word. People have been asking about them, so I’ve started writing up a few more. Let me know if you’re pleased that I’ve done this, or if you’ve been helped by a particular Pair, won’t you!

This one came up in the cafe one Sunday afternoon, as my friend Gill and I were sipping our coffees, looking things up on the Internet via our phones, talking about all sorts … and putting off venturing out into the rain. Is there a difference between these two? Do you know what it is? Really? Because we thought that we did and … well … I’m glad that I always look it up to check!

To procrastinate means to put off doing something. For example, we were procrastinating when we sat in the cafe chatting about this and that rather than going out into the pouring rain.

To prevaricate means to speak or act in an evasive way. For example, when asked whether it was going to carry on raining, a weather forecaster might waffle on about climate change and average daily rainfall in order to avoid telling the truth for as long as possible.

“He prevaricated over paying the bill yet again, claiming that he’d lost his wallet before finally getting it out and paying. So I procrastinated when it was time to ask him out for dinner again, coming up with all sorts of activities that I must do immediately, before getting around to calling him.”

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.

4 Comments

Posted by Liz Dexter on January 27, 2014 in Errors, Language use, Troublesome pairs, Writing

Tags: errors, language, learning, writing

How to use find and replace in Word 1: simple search and replace

11 Dec

This is the first of three articles about the useful Find and Replace functions in Word. It covers Word 2007, Word 2010 and Word 2013 in detail, although once you’ve got past the first hurdle, they all work in exactly the same way. This article tells you why you might want to use Find and Replace, how to locate them, and basics of how to use them. Subsequent articles look in more detail at how to find specific words and phrases, and even symbols and formatting.

Why would I use Find and Replace?

The Find function in Word is very useful if you need to locate all of the places where you’ve used a particular word or phrase. I use it to check that I’ve kept things consistent. I might look for every instance of the word “Find” in an article on Find and Replace, for example, to check …

Have I always used it with a capital letter or sometimes with a lower-case initial letter?
Have I always typed Find and Replace, or sometimes Find & Replace?
Have I used find, finding, etc. too many times around the word Find, making the piece look clumsy?

I also use Find and Replace if I have decided that I want to change something throughout the text, for example:

I’ve used “low fat” and “low-fat” inconsistently and want to change all instances to low-fat
A client wants me to eliminate double spaces after full stops. I Find ” ” and replace it with ” “
I’ve misheard an album title in a transcription and want to go back and find the incorrect version and replace it with the correct one

So, that’s why we use it – how do we use Find and Replace?

How do I access Find and Replace in Word 2007?

You can access the Find and Replace dialogue box in Word 2007 by going to the Home tab and clicking on the arrow to the right of Find at the right-hand end of the menu bar:

Word 2007 also uses the simple Ctrl-F keyboard shortcut to bring up the Find and Replace dialogue box (this also works in Word 2003).

Once you’ve brought up the dialogue box, type in the text you want to search for and press Enter or the Find Next button.

How do I access Find and Replace in Word 2010?

In Word 2010, you can access find and replace using the Home tab and the Find option at the right (note Advanced Find option):

If you just choose Find, you’ll get the sidebar shown below, if you choose Advanced Find, you’ll jump straight to the dialogue box.

Pressing Ctrl-F will bring up a sidebar with a simple search option. This seems very odd if you’re used to Word 2003 and Word 2007, as you are left wondering where the familiar dialogue box is, but it’s actually very useful, as you can see at a glance how many times your word is used and where in the text it can be found, and the word searched for (in this case localisation) is highlighted in the text:

If you want to access the more advanced Find and Replace dialogue box that you’re used to from Word 2007, you need to either choose Advanced Find from the Home tab Find area, or click on the arrow to the right of the magnifying glass in the side panel. If you do that, you’ll get a drop-down menu which includes Advanced Find.

Whichever option you choose, you will then be confronted with the familiar Find and Replace dialogue box:

Once you’ve brought up the dialogue box, type in the text you want to search for and press Enter or the Find Next button.

How do I access Find and Replace in Word 2013?

This works pretty well exactly the same as in Word 2010, just with fewer colours and less handy yellow highlighting (I’m sure you can add that back in and I’ll write about that when I find out how to do it). So, you can either access Find and Replace using the Home tab, Find area, and dropping down the arrow at the right to choose Find or Advanced Find:

If you just choose Find, you’ll get the sidebar shown below, if you choose Advanced Find, you’ll jump straight to the dialogue box.

Or press Ctrl-F to access that useful sidebar that will surprise you if you’re accustomed to Word 2003/2007 … which will show you all instances of any word you search for in the whole document and highlight them (in yellow!):

Then, to reach the dialogue box, click the arrow to the right of the magnifying glass and choose Advanced Find:

And there’s your familiar dialogue box:

Once you’ve brought up the dialogue box, type in the text you want to search for and press Enter or the Find Next button.

Are there more options for Find?

You can access more options for Finding specific text by pressing the More button in the dialogue box:

This will give you lots more options for refining your search. Some are quite obvious, but I’m going to write about all of them in depth in another post.

How do I replace text in Word 2007 / Word 2010 / Word 2013

(Note: all screenshots are from Word 2010, however this works exactly the same for all versions of Word back to Word 2003 and up to Word 2013 (at least)).

To Replace text, you need to go to the second tab along in the Find and Replace dialogue box, marked Replace. You will then be given an extra space to fill in the text you want to replace your found text with. In this case, I’m finding “localisation” and replacing it with “localization”:

At this point you have a choice: hitting Find Next (to find the next instance of the word) and then Replace (to replace it with your new word) for each individual occurrence, or going wild and pressing Replace All (which will automatically replace every occurrence of the word you’ve found with the one you’re replacing it with),

I would always recommend using Find Next – Replace unless you absolutely know that you are not going to be replacing something you don’t mean to replace. Even replacing a double space with a single might play havoc if the person who wrote the document has used spaces to format tables (even if they shouldn’t do that, some still do). And consider this:

“John” means “toilet” in American English. So I might do a search and replace to Find John and replace it with toilet. But what if there’s a character or just someone mentioned called John Bloggs. Or, soon to be, Toilet Bloggs. It’s so easy for this to happen …

So, be careful with your Find and Replace and you’ll be fine!

———-

This article has covered the basics of Find and Replace. Next time, we have a look at the options you can use and using wildcards, and I will also look at finding and replacing formatting …

If you’ve enjoyed this article or found it useful, please comment, or hit one of the share buttons you can see below this article. Thank you!

This is part of my series on how to avoid time-consuming “short cuts” and use Word in the right way to maximise your time and improve the look of your documents.

Please note, these hints work with versions of Microsoft Word currently in use – Word 2007, Word 2010 and Word 2013 all for PC. Mac compatible versions of Word should have similar options. Always save a copy of your document before manipulating it. I bear no responsibility for any pickles you might get yourself into!

Find all the short cuts here …

How do I count the words in a PowerPoint 2013 presentation?

04 Dec

Some time ago, I published what has turned into a pretty popular post on how to count the words in your PowerPoint 2007 document. This is something that is a little tricky to find, so perfect for one of these how-to posts.

All was well and good, then I had some editing to do on a PowerPoint document and my PC automatically opened it in PowerPoint 2013. Where on earth did I find out how to count the words now? Here’s how …

Why would I want to count the words in a presentation?

You might have a word limit imposed by a course tutor, or, more likely, you’re an editor with a per-word rate who needs to check how many words you’ve actually edited.

How do I count the number of words in a PowerPoint 2013 presentation?

To do this, with your document open, you need to go into the FILE tab at the extreme left of the tab list … (one day I’ll work out how to get those tab titles out of capitals and let you know!)

Once in the File tab, stay in the Info area where you land, and click on the arrow next to Properties in the right hand column. Once clicked, you will have a choice between Show Document Panel and Advanced Properties. Click on Advanced Properties:

This is, dare I say it, a little easier than in PowerPoint 2007. Once you’ve clicked on Advanced Properties, you’re given a list of properties. Click on the Statistics tab at the top and you’ll find your Word Count, among other information.

To return to your document, click OK and then back to the Home tab in your document.

How do I count the number of words in a PowerPoint 2010 presentation?

Please see the post on PowerPoint 2010.

How do I count the number of words in a PowerPoint 2007 presentation? (this is a little different).

How do I count the number of words in a PowerPoint 2010 presentation? (different again!)

If you’ve enjoyed this post or found it useful, please do comment, or share using the buttons below! Thank you!

Please note, these hints work with versions of Microsoft Office currently in use – Office 2007, Office 2010 and Office 2013, all for PC. Mac compatible versions of Word should have similar options. Always save a copy of your document before manipulating it. I bear no responsibility for any pickles you might get yourself into!

Find all the short cuts here …

10 Comments

Posted by Liz Dexter on December 4, 2013 in Errors, New skills, PowerPoint, Short cuts, Writing

Tags: errors, learning, powerpoint 2010, powerpoint 2013, research, skills, students

How do I count the words in a PowerPoint 2010 presentation?

04 Dec

How do I count the words in a PowerPoint 2010 presentation?

It’s all a bit different in a PowerPoint 2010 document if you’re used to PowerPoint 2007, because they’ve got rid of the Office button and replaced it with a File tab.

So: open the document and click on the File tab to the left of the Home tab.

This will bring you up a screen where you can open previous documents, save as, etc. Click on Info on the left and your properties will come up on the extreme right.

But of course, yet again, the thing you want to see isn’t immediately visible. Go right to the bottom of the screen and click Show All Properties.

And there’s your word count.

How do I count the number of words in a PowerPoint 2007 presentation? (this is a little different).

How do I count the number of words in a PowerPoint 2013 presentation? (different again!)

If you’ve enjoyed this post or found it useful, please do comment, or share using the buttons below! Thank you!

Find all the short cuts here …

5 Comments

Posted by Liz Dexter on December 4, 2013 in Errors, New skills, PowerPoint, Short cuts, Writing

Tags: errors, learning, powerpoint 2010, research, skills, students

LibroEditing proofreading, editing, transcription, localisation

Tag Archives: errors

What to do when you encounter plagiarism: student work

What is plagiarism?