In case it is not clear - perhaps you are a young student - plagiarism is when you copy other people's work and claim it as your own. Whether you directly copy someone else's work exactly word for word or whether you take their ideas and rewrite them under your name, it is all plagiarism.

Plagiarism is a problem because:

• it stops you learning. If you plagiarise, the first person you damage is YOURSELF.
• it can discourage original authors from working or directly stop them working if they cannot earn from their published work. This stops the advance of human knowledge.
• it stops people judging your capabilities, including yourself. The point of our academic systems for most people [exiting high school or bachelor degree] is to develop their learning skills and provide them with a certificate of how their ability relates to the difficulty of work and other people who have tried the same thing. If you plagiarise, this result will be false and you will find yourself unable to cope later on.

ITS would encourage others to link to this simple free plagiarism checker and help efforts to wipe out plagiarism.