Plagarism
According to the Indiana University Writing Tutorial Services department, plagiarism is defined as the use of another person's idea, opinion, or theory without providing the proper credit whenever used. This also includes using facts, statistics, graphs, drawings, quotations, or even paraphrasing without providing the propers citations. (WTS, 2009)
The WTS includes a wealth of information including models of acceptable and unacceptable paraphrases, strategies for avoiding plagiarism, and basic common knowledge terms every writer needs to know. That wealth of information can be found here. (WTS, 2009)
My first run-in with plagiarism came during a college prep camp at Indiana University. I was running late preparing a paper over Aristotle, and I made the mistake of taking a great majority of my information from the internet without providing a citation for my work. My teacher at the time caught me, and I was forced to meet with director of the program as well as my teacher who explained every aspect of plagiarism in great detail.
The issue I had with plagiarism at that time was that I had no idea of what it was. My middle school didn't have lessons on how to cite your work, nor did they place a high value on information unless it was blatant cheating on a test. As a teacher, I am finding students that run into the same issues I had earlier in my educational career. Many students do not know what plagiarism is exactly, and they do not know what they can do to shield themselves from rather ugly meetings in the future.
For more information regarding plagiarism, or tips on what you can do to prevent this in your work, go here.