Plagiarism occurs when a person uses words or ideas from another person's work but fails to give credit to the source of the ideas or words. Academic work of any nature primarily requires writing dissertations, treatises, or term papers in academia. Students at higher education institutions, as part of their course work, carry out research and present their findings in the form of dissertations or term papers. Assignment formatting usually follows standards, namely the American Psychologists Association (APA) format or the Modern Language Association (MLA) format. Not only can plagiarism be committed in research written for academic purposes only, but it can also be committed in general writing areas. like in blogging or songwriting. A person who creates an idea or writes a work is the owner and creator of that work. This is the basic idea behind copyright laws. Copyright laws also cover outputs such as images and video clips. Reusing these ideas or words in your own work without showing readers their source is plagiarism. Plagiarism can be committed in several ways. The writer can commit this crime voluntarily or do it involuntarily. With the advent of the Internet and the dissemination of large amounts of information online, cases of plagiarism are on the rise. Computers have allowed students, workers, and even lazy teachers to copy information from web pages or electronic books. The danger here is that in some cases, they may reuse or incorporate portions of information into their work without giving any credit to the online reference source. Cynthia Jones-Shoeman (2010) exposes one of the ways in which plagiarism can be committed by the writer (in this...... half of the document ...... Types of plagiarism. "Learning Center: Definitions of Plagiarism, tips on avoiding plagiarism, guidelines for correct citation, and help identifying plagiarism." Retrieved from http ://www.plagiarism.org/plag_article_types_of_plagiarism.htmlPlagiarism.org (n.d.) What is plagiarism? "Center of learning: definitions of plagiarism, tips on avoiding plagiarism, guidelines for correct citation, and help identifying plagiarism". /www.plagiarism.org/plag_article_what_is_plagiarism.htmlStolley, K. and Brizee, A. (2011-06- 02). “Avoiding plagiarism: overview and contradictions”. english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/01/Stolley, K. and Brizee, A. (21-04-2010). plagiarism again?". The Writing Workshop, Purdue University. Retrieved from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/2/