Tips for Successful Plagiarism

I know that some students are very successful at plagiarism, but some are quite lousy, so I thought I'd spend some time today to point out ways to improve at plagiarism.

1. If you are buying a paper, you should maybe take it to a tutoring center and have them help you revise it. This way you can make sure it has some of your voice. Although be sure not to tell the people at the center that you bought the paper-- that could come back to bite you in the butt. Also, make sure you know what the paper is saying before you take it to the center. If you don't understand it then they will know you bought it.

That leads me to point number 2.
2. Make sure you can understand the paper that you are turning in. If it uses words that you don't know, you should look them up. Sometimes a teacher will ask you what a word means that is used in the paper if he/she suspects that you're plagiarizing. If you know what all the words mean-- especially when they are subjects of whole paragraphs-- you are less apt to be suspected of cheating.

3. Make sure the assignment you turn in matches the assignment that was assigned. If you are supposed to turn in a cause and effect paper on a current event, you shouldn't turn in a cause and effect paper on the civil war. Any war that was fought over 100 years ago no longer qualifies as a current event. There are different ways to make sure your plagiarized work matches your actual assignment. You can pay or coerce someone into doing your homework for you. If he/she sees the assignment, then he'll know what to write. You can type the assignment into google. Sometimes if a school has a standardized curriculum, there are people from your school willing to sell old homework. Or you can look around to make sure that the paper you buy is close to the assignment.

3b. Point 3 is especially true when you are assigned summaries. If you plagiarize a summary, you want to double check that you are plagiarizing the correct work. Sometimes authors write works on similar themes, and it can become tricky to keep track of which story you are supposed to be looking at. Excerpts from stories can be problematic as well. You want to be sure that your summary does not include details from the longer work if you were only supposed to read the abbreviated form.

4. Make sure that there isn't too big of a jump in your writing style from assignments you have done yourself to assignments you are plagiarizing. The most effective plagiarism is done when all works are plagiarized from the same source, then you are less likely to be suspected. Although, unless you are paying someone to do your homework, it is difficult to maintain that sort of consistency. It is important that work you plagiarize sound like you. Otherwise, a teacher might request to see drafts so that he/she can believe that your writing has actually improved that much vs. it being what it is, plagiarism.

Well, I know there are probably other tips out there, but I thought these would get you started.

Happy Cheating, and if you get caught-- you deserve it.