Chicago librarian Jane Prestebak was suspicious that a student had copied an assignment off the Internet.

“He said he had spacing problems and couldn’t get the margins to an inch,” Prestebak says.

Curious, Prestebak typed the first five words of the paper into the search engine Google. Within seconds, she knew whether the student was cheating: “I found two papers that matched his,” she says.

Copying information off the Internet and claiming it as original is considered plagiarism. Whether it’s copying a full paper from one source or copying different paragraphs from different sources, teachers think plagiarism is serious cheating. And teachers who catch students cheating can do more than just give the assignment a failing grade. At some schools, students may be barred from after-school activities or even suspended.

Adina K., 15, of Skokie, Ill., attends a school that charges students with academic dishonesty if they’re caught plagiarizing.

“They put it in your behavioral record and colleges could request to see it,” she says.

Even though Adina knows her school has a strict policy against plagiarism, it hasn’t stopped her from copying from the Internet.

“I just do it for science papers, not English papers,” she says. “Science papers are all fact and it’s not like you can change it around. But English papers are about your opinion.”

A classmate of Adina’s, Mary I., 15, of Skokie, Ill., says teachers don’t notice small doses of plagiarism. Mary says she often copies different paragraphs she finds online and adds them to her own work. “I don’t turn in a fully copied paper,” she says. “Just a few sentences.”

Jennie L., 13, of Oak Park, Ill., isn’t interested in borrowed work and says she worries that plagiarizing an assignment now could lead to trouble later.

“You’ll never understand the material and there are concepts you need to learn,” she says. “Besides, you can’t cheat on the SATs!”

Most students don’t think teachers will realize their paper was copied from any resource.

“Because the Internet is so big, students don’t think teachers can catch them,” Prestebak says.

But copiers beware, new Internet databases for teachers help track plagiarized papers. For a small fee, teachers can check to see if an assignment is an original or a copy.

Prestebak says it’s not hard for a teacher to tell whether a student has cheated. Plagiarized papers often are written above a student’s ability. And since teachers know a student’s style of writing not referring to the handwriting, but rather the “voice” of their style a copied paper can stand out.

Even without an Internet search, Prestebak says she can determine whether a student copied. “Visiting with the student will reveal whether he or she plagiarized,” she says. “If they really don’t know the topic and the assignment, it’s obvious.”

Plagiarizing a paper from the Internet may seem like an easy solution for stressed students. But Prestebak warns that the methods students use to find free papers are the same ones used by teachers to check for cheaters: “It’s just as easy for teachers to find papers (online) as it is for students.”