Plagiarism Sucks! More ranting from Scott

I've always hated when I see issues of plagiarism, but frankly, I am just getting plain pissed at people who think they can get away with it.

I was just working through some material in one of my classes and found a case of plagiarism. This person actually told people in a critique group that they had used a thesaurus to develop a larger vocabulary. In reality, it was far from the truth. Other than about 3 sentences, the majority of the document was copied.

How do I know? When I read the document this morning (I was away from the computer) the writing stood out as being a bit too formalized for the assignment. When I returned home, I sat down at the computer and after 1 quick search (roughly 2 minutes), I had found the material. She had taken over 13 pages of text and simply copied it. What is worse, is the time it took for me to document the material so I can deal with this individual. I spent nearly 30 minutes, copying pages, highlighting and referencing every case. Not fun and certainly not the thing I want to have to deal with.

There is simply no excuse for plagiarism. "I didn't know", or "I didn't think it was a problem", or any other lame excuse is simply that. It is an excuse.

I am sorry but I have no sympathy for anyone who is a thief, (because in reality, taking someone elses material and claiming it as your own is theft).

So, for those writers out there. If you have to resort to this type of writing to get your work read and published, please, just go find another profession. You simply do not belong in the world of publishing.

I need a cup of coffee now to mellow out after that one.