What's strange about your teacher

Almost everyone experiences it in the course of their school career: a term paper or a presentation is pending, the deadline is getting closer and you have not even started to do anything about it.

What could be more obvious than going online? Schoolchildren can use the Internet to get endless information from the Internet and use it in their work. The temptation is of course great to use the World Wide Web not only to search for information. Instead, you can simply copy one or the other sentence or entire passages from published works by other authors - without citing or quoting the source.

But be careful: plagiarism will not as a trivial offense respected, even if many students believe it.

Plagiarism ... or the art of copying

Many students are confronted every day with having to work on presentations or homework. Often there is not enough time. In such situations, instead of panicking, throw yourself into work and peel through books and specialist literature.

It is a common bad habit to simply copy existing presentations or term papers and pass them off as your own work. It has got out of hand with relevant sites on the Internet. In the World Wide Web archives can be found with works on almost any topic. Mostly even free of charge and clearly sorted by subject area. Understandably, the temptation is great to adorn yourself with strange feathers.

Watch out, dialer!

Quickly download a presentation - and a hefty bill flutters into the house. Because behind many harmless looking websites are hiding expensive dialers. Chargeable dialers can easily be identified by the uniform area code 0900-9. It is mandatory for them to use these by law.

Admittedly, it is very easy to simply copy content from the Internet and paste it into a word processing program. But it would be a fallacy to believe that the unabashed adoption of content is a tolerable trivial offense. Of course, this also applies to books, scientific and other magazines, newspapers and all other printed matter.

In principle, it is allowed to use the information found or available as a Suggestion to utilize. However, it is forbidden to simply copy the information. This applies equally to entire works, individual pages or just passages of text. Because you are violating copyright law and creating plagiarism.

It would be equally naive to hope that your proofreading teacher does not find the copied content. After all, teachers are not from yesterday. Of course, you also know the tricks and sources on the Internet.


The term plagiarism comes from the Latin plagium, which means kidnapping. Plagiarism is the submission of third-party intellectual property as your own work or as part of your own work. It is a criminal offense and obliges the plagiarist to pay damages. In short, you are committing an intellectual property theft when you illegally imitate or publish a work that is not yours.

The difference between plagiarism and quotation

The plagiarism is not to be confused with the quote, which at least in the scientific field by References refers to the author and is usually of only limited scope. As a delimitation, the copyright law says: “The free use of a work protected by copyright is permitted in order to produce a new, independent work. However, the new work itself must have all the prerequisites for an intellectual work and to a certain extent suppress the creative output of the work used. "

In science, unlike in literature, the paraphrasing of a text or the unmarked adoption of an argument without citing the source is understood as plagiarism.

The Federal Ministry of Justice provides information on copyright and related rights.

Typical characteristics of plagiarism

Teachers suspect plagiarism based on the following points and can easily track you down:

  • Change of style: It is noticeable if a part of the written version is grammatically free of errors, while other parts are not. Incidentally, copied text parts can easily be found using a search engine.
  • Extraordinary terms and expressions
  • Change of formatting: You will be easily transferred if you use different types of headings, vary the font within your text or use different line lengths and spacing. The fraud can be recognized immediately if you leave underlined words that were previously a hyperlink in the text unchanged.
  • Strange or repetitive spelling and grammatical errors: A misspelled proper name can be an indication that you used multiple sources when copying.

Allowed ...

It is permissible to quote. But only in the form of literal and analogous citations, both of which can of course be found by footnotes and references. Because a presentation or a term paper should be the author's own creative achievement. The structure, line of thought and linguistic design of the author should be recognizable.

... and not forbidden

You are also allowed to run your written work through a spelling and grammar program. Or that you submit it to another person for correction according to the four-eyes principle, e.g. B. your parents.

School impact

If you use plagiarism, it is certainly not safe for your school career. Because anyone who steals someone else's intellectual property and presents it as his own performance commits one Act of deception or at least one Attempted deception. By the way, it doesn't matter how much you have copied.

Dealing with plagiarism is in the various rules and regulations of the School laws of the federal states regulated.

Proof of plagiarism

It is not sufficient for a punishment if your teacher can only accuse you of the act of deception. Basically the Evidence of the act of deception required.

No problem is proof if you are caught red-handed cheating or if you can prove that your written achievements are based on unauthorized whisperings. Your teacher can also use the internet to obtain the necessary evidence. It can easily be that your sweaty work is rated "unsatisfactory".

The evidence becomes more difficult if you use outside help, e.g. B. that of your parents and older siblings. Then your teacher can convict you or your helpers only with clever questions.

Punitive measures

Your teacher may be able to take the following measures against the plagiarist:

  • Admonitions (in lighter cases)
  • Imposing more serious measures such as detention, reprimand, exclusion from school for repeat offenders
  • Withdrawal of performance and repetition with a different topic
  • Note deduction
  • Evaluation of performance with insufficient

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