Plagiarism Detection Services Are Money Well Spent Summary

In the article, “Plagiarism Detection Services are Money Well Spent” Stephanie Vie uses proper structure and appropriate assumptions to argue why plagiarism detection services are not a profitable tool. She structures her article in a way that makes her points flow and makes it easier for the readers to understand. She uses structure by first having the introduction set up to let the reader begin to understand what she will be arguing about in the article. For example, Stephanie states, “As plagiarism paranoia takes hold, faculty begin to wonder how many other students are plagiarizing or have plagiarized in the past.” (Stephanie Vie 287). This quote leads to examples of how plagiarism has made people skeptical all around, as to who might have plagiarized it. She then

(Vie 288) For example, common phrases being used may be “flagged” by the tool because it doesn’t know that it is common. Stephanie Vie structures the article to which she describes in detail why detection services aren’t useful. She continues to argue about how these tools are taking other authors’ work to check for plagiarism. Stephanie states, “An author’s work is submitted to a plagiarism detection site and then usually saved as part of the tool’s databases to be used in the future when new works are submitted for originality checks.” (Stephanie 289) In other words, these tools take other people’s work that has gone through the system and then get used to check other’s work. This shows one reason why plagiarism detection services are not useful. Stephanie further uses proper structure to give a solution to her main argument. Towards the end of her article that she titles, “So What Do We Do?” she gives a better reason for what to do rather than using plagiarism detection