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The Copycat Syndrome: Plagiarists At Work

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The Copycat Syndrome: Plagiarists At Work
As reviewed in her essay “The Copycat Syndrome: Plagiarists at Work,” Meghan O’Rourke investigates the multiple reasons and different factors that make people consider plagiarism a huge issue. One of the main things that bothers people about plagiarism is that it lacks originality. As Robert McCrum wrote in the Observer, “We prize originality above everything and place a high value on novelty of expression” (O’Rourke 338). Thus, a partial answer to the question why people consider plagiarism such a serious offense is because using another author’s work shows a lack of originality from the writer. However, the main reason why people are so disturbed by plagiarism is because they are concerned about “the just distribution of labor”.
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