The 10 Types of Plagiarism Every Writer Should Know

We all know plagiarism as one of the mortal sins of writing. It’s essential to know all 10 types of plagiarism, since most of its instances can be barely identified by most writers.

Most people think that plagiarism is committed when copy and pasting content from other people’s work. However, that’s not the only situation one must be mindful of when writing. Plagiarism comes in various forms, sometimes, difficult to identify.

As writers, research is a vital part of writing. When taking information from various sources, bibliography and proper citation becomes an important component of the text. Writers should always keep cautious on committing these various types of plagiarism.

By reading this article, you will find out about all 10 types of plagiarism.

What are the 10 Types of Plagiarism

Academic writers face widespread plagiarism issues when writing their research papers or dissertations. Famous plagiarism checking tools classify plagiarisms into 10 types.

Plagiarism may also cause you to lose credibility in your work.

As the severity of plagiarism has been discussed, it’s important to outline and detail its various types. Considering that most students plagiarize out of carelessness, rather than intentionality.

Listed below are 10 of the most common types of plagiarism.

1. Cloning

Cloning is when you steal the ideas of other people and pass them off as your own. Also, it’s usually in a way too similar to the original author’s work to not be easily spotted.

2. Remix

Remix plagiarism entails gathering information from many sources and combining it into one document that is then claimed to be their own work.

3. Copy-Paste

This kind of plagiarism depicts the act of purely copying a piece of text from an already existent content to your own. It goes without any alteration or paraphrasing. Usually, this is the worst type of plagiarism.

4. Hybrid

When you copy properly cited text into your new content, it’s called hybrid plagiarism.

5. Find-Replace

This is committed when a writer attempts to copy the whole text and try to find and replace specific words. A plagiarizer does this to make the content seem not plagiarized.

6. Recycle

It’s also known as “self-plagiarism”. A writer commits this when he tries to copy his own idea from a previously published paper written by himself.

7. Mashup

This happens when a written document is taken from various sources. From the name itself, each part of the content comes from different references, copied and pasted as if it’s a new whole text.

8. 404 Error

Mashup and 404 Error plagiarism seems similar. However, 404 Error plagiarism uses false source links when trying to make the text look like as if it’s not plagiarized. When a reviewer clicks the link provided, it shows a 404 error notice.

9. Aggregator

Ironically, this kind of plagiarism consists of a paper with proper citations. It’s frowned upon by the writing community because the document only consists of cited sentences from various sources. The output does not have original written content.

10. Re-Tweet

This kind of plagiarism seems properly cited and restructured. However, the problem appears when the texts and flow of thoughts appear the same as the cited source.

To Wrap Up

Today’s society has broken down into an unprecedented digital way of communicating. Social media and websites that post articles and information allow for content to be shared and published on a large scale.

Without creating original content for content’s sake, everyone is at risk for committing plagiarism. Knowing what are its types and how to avoid them will help you prevent facing its dire consequences.