As a freelance writer or student writer, your work should be 100% original. Work that is not original is plagiarised.

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism can be any of the following:

* Passing off someone else’s words as your own

* Passing off someone else’s ideas as your own

* Rewording a source but retaining the original ideas it contains, without giving due credit (example).

* Failing to put a quote in quotation marks

* Copying large sections of someone else’s words or ideas, even if credit is given or quotation marks are used

* Giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation – for example, citing a source that the real author has found and used, that you do not have a copy of

* Changing the words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit

These are just examples and are not exhaustive.

Plagiarism can also be the re-use of material you have written yourself - for example, for your university, for another person, or for any other academic institution, body or publication. Using old material is NOT original and will be regarded as plagiarism.

Many institutions have different views of what plagiarism is. This article can only provide general guidelines on plagiarism.

How much copied work must there be for a claim of plagiarism to succeed?

Clearly, one direct quote of 10 words that the writer accidently fails to put in quotation marks will not lead to a claim for plagiarism. But I am reluctant to put a percentage or definite figure down for what would constitute a claim.

As an example, I recently review the following work which had:

* A 4,000 word appendix made up of copied material (which she included as part of her 19,000 words) most of which she did not attribute to any source

* A section of 1,000 words which was at least 50% 'paraphrased' from a report. The researcher had changed a few words around, replaced some words with her own, and maintained the entire structure of the report.

* Padded the bibliography with around 40 sources (only 11 were used within the actual text)

The first example - the appendix - is a simple case of plagiarism. Even if the writer had attributed the material to sources, it would still not be 4,000 words of original material the client had paid her to write.

The second example she refused to accept as plagiarism because, she said, 50% of 1,000 words in a 19,000 word essay is nothing (about 3% of the overall word count). I disagree - as would the majority of academic institutions. That section was heavily plagiarised. It does not matter that, substracting from 19,000 words the 4,000 word 'appendix' and the 1,000 word section leaves 14,000 words that were relatively well written. There was evidence of substantial plagiarism in at least those two parts of the work. The final point about the padded bibliography is a quality issue rather than one of plagiarism. 11 sources in a 19,000 word masters level dissertation is nothing short of a joke.

In a 1,000 word essay, it is highly unlikely that anyone would regard a 3% match as plagiarism. So as you can see, it depends on so many different factors and I cannot put a percentage on what is, and what is not, plagiarism. I know some academic institutions disregard a match of below 5% but as you can see from the above example, this might not always work where the brief is quite long.

If you can write to a good standard (originally!) and you're looking for a writing opportunity, why not check out Academic Knowledge? They are recruiting for writers in all subject areas now.