Plagiarism can be a difficult issue for students because it is one of the few areas of academic dishonesty which can result both from a failure to understand appropriate process as well as from intentional cheating.

Here is a quick definition of plagiarism. Plagiarism is taking material someone else has written and presenting it as something the student has written. Most plagiarism happens with writing, but it can also happen in many other areas, such as music, art, and computer programming.

Intentional plagiarism happens when students copy another person's work and hand it in as their own. There are numerous sites on the internet which sell papers on a vast range of topics. Some sites give papers away.  Supposedly the papers are for "research purposes" only, but many students buy them, download them, and hand them in as their own work. That's plagiarism. That's cheating. That gets the student an F for the course, and perhaps more.  

A more common form of intentional plagiarism occurs when a student copies a passage from a web page and pastes it into his or her essay with appropriate documentation.  Once again, that's plagiarism. Another form of plagiarism happens when a student submits a paper written by a friend for another class. Once again, that earns an F.

Unintentional plagiarism happens when a student doesn't understand the right way to use material from other sources. Most college writing requires either research or response to material other people have written, and students sometimes have a hard time catching on to the right way to quote material and to acknowledge the sources they have used.

Much of the time the difference between intentional and unintentional plagiarism is clear. Sometimes it isn't. Most instructors don't make a big deal over unintentional plagiarism. Their attitude is that students are here to learn how to do these things, and it's easy to make mistakes while they are learning.

Some instructors are more strict in their response. They feel it is the student's responsibility to understand how to correctly use outside material and that any misuse is a serious academic matter. In the end, it is the student's responsibility to learn how to write without plagiarizing.