Category: plagiarism

When does copying text become plagiarism?

March 5, 2010 by Edmund Gall

Ever since attending primary school, I've been aware that copying someone's work was wrong.  At college - high school in North American parlance - I learnt about plagiarism.  I was reminded about it in university when compiling research and some months ago it was played out in T&T's political and press arenas with the accusation of plagiarism by a newpaper columnist / priest / potential Integrity Commission member.

Related to this, I learnt about attribution - if you're going to use someone's work in yours, then you need to highlight what you used, where you got it from and whose work it was.  In research, this is done through referencing.  In websites, you may use a copyright signature and embed a link to the original work.

I'm wondering what's the standard in T&T's media houses.  Sometimes, articles would have the writer's name in the byline, and sometimes they won't.  I always presumed that if no name was attached to an article, then it was written by some junior member of the media house's staff.  However, if an article was copied from another media house, then appropriate attribution was expected.

Today I offer two curious examples from T&T's daily papers' websites, both involving cricket. {Read more}