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The Handbook of University
Policies and Procedures has a clear policy on Academic Integrity and
Plagiarism, in policy 3.40.12.
You should read this and make yourself thoroughly familiar with its contents.
It defines plagiarism as follows:
Plagiarism is the
act of misrepresenting as one's own original work the ideas, interpretations,
words or creative works of another. These include published and unpublished
documents, designs, music, sounds, images, photographs, computer codes
and ideas gained through working in a group. These ideas, interpretations,
words or works may be found in print and/or electronic media. ...
The following are
examples of plagiarism where appropriate acknowledgement or referencing
of the author or source does not occur:
- Direct copying
of paragraphs, sentences, a single sentence or significant parts
of a sentence;
- Direct copying
of paragraphs, sentences, a single sentence or significant parts
of a sentence with an end reference but without quotation marks
around the copied text;
- Copying ideas,
concepts, research results, computer codes, statistical tables,
designs, images, sounds or text or any combination of these;
- Paraphrasing,
summarising or simply rearranging another person's words, ideas,
etc without changing the basic structure and/or meaning of the text;
- Offering an
idea or interpretation that is not one's own without identifying
whose idea or interpretation it is;
- A ‘cut and
paste' of statements from multiple sources;
- Presenting
as independent, work done in collaboration with others;
- Copying or
adapting another student's original work into a submitted assessment
item. (Policy
3.40.12)
This course accepts that definition, and those examples.
You should note that this does not define plagiarism as an intention
to deceive. Plagiarism is simply the act of using others' work without
acknowledgement, for whatever reasons. The onus is on you to document
all of your sources and borrowings, exhaustively and scrupulously. You
should see the School
Style Guide for details of how to do this.
Ignorance of what constitutes plagiarism cannot be accepted as any
form of excuse. Quite the contrary. As fair usage is so absolutely central
to intellectual and academic work, the very ignorance of it is in itself
culpable, and compounds rather than lessens the offence.
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Let's say you are preparing an essay on the way the Australian landscape
is depicted in film and television. You come across this passage in Ross
Gibson's essay, "Camera natura: Landscape in Australian feature films,"
and you want to use the point it makes:
Delusive "common
sense" prevails especially when a moving picture of a static,
seemingly unartificed landscape is presented. It is tempting to say,
"Well, there it is, untouched, panoramically extensive, simply
photographed, objectively true". But this would be to ignore
the many selected and manipulated variables in a photographic images
of the landscape: time of day; camera into sun; camera away from sun;
stature, visibility and actions of human beings within the environment;
choice of lens; static shot; tracking shot; duration without edit;
soundtrack; location of landscape shot within the narrative progression.
The list could go on.... The shots of sublime geography which are
so prevalent and connotative in Australian feature films are deliberately
constructed to give off their seemingly objective messages.
The essay comes from Frow and Morris's collection, Australian Cultural
Studies: A Reader, on page 215.
| Legitimate
ways of using this passage ... |
...
and why they are |
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Film does not
just give us a passive reflection of what a landscape looks like:
Delusive
"common sense" prevails especially when a moving picture
of a static, seemingly unartificed landscape is presented. It
is tempting to say, "Well, there it is, untouched, panoramically
extensive, simply photographed, objectively true". But this
would be to ignore the many selected and manipulated variables
in a photographic image of the landscape: time of day; camera
into sun; camera away from sun; stature, visibility and actions
of human beings within the environment; choice of lens; static
shot; tracking shot; duration without edit; soundtrack; location
of landscape shot within the narrative progression. The list could
go on.... The shots of sublime geography which are so prevalent
and connotative in Australian feature films are deliberately constructed
to give off their seemingly objective messages. (Gibson 215)
The construction
may vary enormously from film to film. The way the landscape in
the Mad Max films is constructed cinematically is clearly
very different from the way it's constructed in a series like Crocodile
Hunter.
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You've used the entire passage,
as is, and (with the help of a bibliography entry) indicated exactly
where it comes from. You've indicated that you're not just drawing
on it for ideas, but using it word-for-word. (In citing long passages,
the indentation stands for quotation marks: see the Style Guide, section
3.6.2.) It doesn't for a moment pretend to be your work; it's the
springboard for your own argument, which follows. |
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Film does not
just give us a passive reflection of what a landscape looks like.
It actively constructs that view though a series of "selected
and manipulated variables," such as the time of day, the position
of the camera and whether it moves, the type of lens, and the editing
(Gibson 215). This construction may vary enormously from film to
film.
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You're citing a phrase of Gibson's,
and condensing his list. The whole sentence marks this debt. |
For the documentation to make sense in each of these cases, you will
need to include an entry in your list of Works Consulted:
Gibson, Ross. "Camera
natura: Landscape in Australian feature films." Australian Cultural
Studies: A Reader. Ed. John Frow and Meaghan Morris. St Leonards,
NSW: Allen and Unwin, 1993. 209-221.
Make sure this is under the author's name, not the editors'.
(Who deserves the credit, after all?)
| Non-legitimate
ways of using this passage ... |
...
and why they're not |
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Film does not
just give us a passive reflection of what a landscape looks like.
Delusive "common sense" prevails especially when a moving
picture of a static, seemingly unartificed landscape is presented.
It is tempting to say, "Well, there it is, untouched, panoramically
extensive, simply photographed, objectively true". But this
would be to ignore the many selected and manipulated variables in
a photographic image of the landscape: time of day; camera into
sun; camera away from sun; stature, visibility and actions of human
beings within the environment; choice of lens; static shot; tracking
shot; duration without edit; soundtrack; location of landscape shot
within the narrative progression. The list could go on.... The shots
of sublime geography which are so prevalent and connotative in Australian
feature films are deliberately constructed to give off their seemingly
objective messages. This construction may vary enormously from film
to film.
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You've used the entire passage,
as is, without any indication that it's not yours. An accurate bibliography
entry doesn't help. No matter what you meant to do by it, these sentences
are presented as your work when they're not. |
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| Film
does not just give us a passive reflection of what a landscape looks
like. Delusive "common sense" prevails especially when a
moving picture of a static, seemingly unartificed landscape is presented.
It is tempting to say, "Well, there it is, untouched, panoramically
extensive, simply photographed, objectively true". But this would
be to ignore the many selected and manipulated variables in a photographic
image of the landscape: time of day; camera into sun; camera away
from sun; stature, visibility and actions of human beings within the
environment; choice of lens; static shot; tracking shot; duration
without edit; soundtrack; location of landscape shot within the narrative
progression. The list could go on.... The shots of sublime geography
which are so prevalent and connotative in Australian feature films
are deliberately constructed to give off their seemingly objective
messages. (Gibson 215) This construction may vary enormously from
film to film. |
You're still citing verbatim,
but this time you've given the source. The problem is that the absence
of inverted commas (or indentation, in the case of a longer passage)
says that this is not direct citation, that you're freely using
Gibson's ideas rather than copying his exact words. You're
saying that the ideas come from somewhere else, but what you're
not saying is that the very words were written by someone else.
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| Film
does not just give us a passive reflection of what a landscape looks
like. "Common sense" prevails particularly with the case
of a moving picture of a static, seemingly natural landscape. It is
tempting to say that such a picture is simply and objectively true,
but that would be to ignore all the selected and manipulated variables
in the image of the landscape: time of day; camera into or out of
sun; static or tracking shot; presence of human beings; choice of
lens; editing; narrative.... The landscape shots which are so prevalent
and connotative in Australian feature films are deliberately constructed
to give off these seemingly objective messages. (Gibson 215) |
This is a rather minimal paraphrase
of Gibson. It keeps the basic structure of his sentences, changes
a word here and there, and alters the order of things in the list,
but that's all. Again, the absence of inverted commas indicates that
you're using Gibson's ideas; but all you've done here is fiddle with
his words. The parenthetical reference does say that this (or at least
some of it—but how much?) comes from Gibson, but it's quite misleading
about the extent of your borrowing. |
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