Quote PlagiarismQuote Plagiarism — illustrated emblem for the Mr. B Quotes glossary, category Quote CultureQQUOTE CULTURE
Quote Culture

Quote Plagiarism

Presenting someone else's words as your own by removing or omitting the quotation marks.

Quote plagiarism is the simplest form of the offence: taking a sentence written or spoken by another and letting readers assume it is yours. It happens through deleted quotation marks, dropped attributions, or lightly reworded borrowings.

Citing the source does not by itself cure it. Reproducing exact wording with a citation but without quotation marks still misrepresents which words are yours, and most academic codes treat that as plagiarism rather than as a formatting error.

Accidental cases usually trace to note-taking: a phrase copied verbatim into notes, later drafted in without its marks. Recording quotation marks at the point of capture prevents nearly all of them.

Common mistake: assuming familiar phrasing is public property. Recent coinages and distinctive turns of phrase have identifiable authors, and "everyone says it" is not a source.

Example
A verbatim sentence from a source, cited in a footnote but printed without quotation marks.
illustrative case · The citation shows where the idea came from; only the marks show that the words did too.
Related terms

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