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Right, imagine in the context of education, that a student is drafting some essay or whatever. In the process, that student might copy/paste some text from another article and then will go on to rewrite the text into their own language.

By normal definition, this wouldn't be plagiarism, so long as the student extrapolates and restates the original text. And ideally, the student would cite that source, but it probably doesn't happen.

Grammarly might be able to catch this "mistake" - because it would see the copy/pasted text in the first revision and then potentially flag the final outcome.

I'm not saying that plagiarism detection is all that bad of a thing. Teachers need some level of support to help keep their students honest. But there's too much information, in my opinion, being sent when you use any sort of keylogger tool or online editor.




I disagree about your example not counting as plagiarism if the original source is not cited.


Agreed—if that paraphrased or rewritten text isn't cited, it's absolutely plagiarism, by any academic standard.


By the normal definition, that is plagiarism. It is even plagiarism if the person was the original author of the pasted paragraph and it came from another work.


I never knew self plagiarism was a thing until recently. Is it a formality, or is there some kind of reason it's dishonest in the way normal plagiarism is?

Is it because it messes up the ability to figure out what analysis was done when, and what you had access to at the time, and makes it look like older work has the same trustworthiness as newer work that might be done with different equipment or access to sources or new experience?


> By the normal definition, that is plagiarism.

Depends on how much they changed it.

> It is even plagiarism if the person was the original author of the pasted paragraph and it came from another work.

Nah that concept can go screw itself.




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