I have recently been officially found guilty of plagiarism on steemit! I have done it and I am not proud of it,however I have chosen to move on, chosen to better myself and have decided to share a little about my recent brush with @cheetabot @steemclean and the steemit law!

Guy's I am no writer, I am dyslexic and unemployed which probably makes me a little desperate and when I found a way to earn some extra cash on steemit I made mistakes. Let's face it, although all the above mentioned might have been contributing factors to my recent mistakes there are no excuses, Plagiarism is serious! Some of what I posted as plagiarism was done out of ignorance and some I used information I copied online, did my best rewrite because I didn't believe I was good enough to write on the topic even though I could relate fairly well.

I have taken it upon myself to share what I have found on the subject of plagiarism and found what has now become my new Golden Rule for avoiding plagiarism on steemit!

Give Credit Where Credit is Due!

Basically, there is only one way to avoid plagiarism—give credit to a source whenever you use information that is not your own unless it is common knowledge. If you come up with an idea all on your own, you don't have to give credit to anyone, except yourself. Also, if you are writing about something that is common knowledge, you don’t have to give a citation for your source.

Common Knowledge

Common knowledge is whatever information you and your reader are likely to know without referring to some other source. For example, there are 435 U.S. Congress Members and 100 U.S. Senators. That's probably common knowledge. How many of the Congress Members and Senators are Democrats, Republicans, or from other political parties, may or may not be common knowledge, depending on you and your reader(s). The more likely both you and your reader(s) are to know that information, and especially the more controversial a fact or idea is, the more likely it is to be common knowledge. How many votes any particular member of the House or the Senate got in the last election is probably not common knowledge. If the number of votes a candidate received is part of your paper, you should probably cite the source.

The best rule of thumb to determine whether or not to give credit to a source for information that might be common knowledge is, "When in doubt, give the source." It is always better to err on the safe side.

Cite Your Sources

When should you cite a source? You should give credit to a source whenever you use someone else's work or idea that is not common knowledge. This includes any time you use or refer to information that comes from

• interviews.
• Internet sites.
• chat room conversations.
• radio or television programs.
• personal letters.
• speeches.
• books.
• magazines.
• newspapers.
• tape, video, or CD recordings.
• electronic databases.
• basically any source.

Don't forget to give credit any time you use any of the following that come from another source:

• quotations
• statistics
• graphs
• pictures
• ideas or hypotheses
• stories
• lists
  As stated above, the bottom line is that you have to provide a source citation for every use of another person's words or ideas unless the information is common knowledge.

And here is my due credit at the source: Pearson Prentice Hall

See now how difficult was that? I have said my 2 cents worth, given credit to the original post and source of information and avoided plagiarism :-) The best part is I had fun doing this and instead of posting duplicated crap I have hopefully added some value and possibly offered a little incite into the matter.

If you would like to dispute or report plagiarism you will need to visit https://steemit.chat/. If you have any questions, uncertainties or need help this is the place to be, very helpful and understanding.

A big thank you to @anduweb and @patrice for your helping me, your understanding and helping me to understand my situation!

Thanks for reading and supporting my future on steemit, I believe the mistakes of my past are the opportunities of my future!

Cheerz