Are You An Accidental Plagiarist?



Wallflower83

The idea of plagiarism scares me, as it should.  I am a writer of fiction and of a blog, so I need to be careful in how I do research and pass it on, so I don't use other people's words as my own.   

When I don't know about a subject (which is often), I defer to experts.  I use quotes, and I paraphrase.  But this gets tricky. 

Wallflower83 has titled the image in this post, "Originality is Only Undetected Plagiarism."

Think about it.  Isn't most of what we know something we've learned from someone else?  We build on other people's knowledge.  That's why we go to school, read texts, and study under teachers who pass on information they've learned from someone else. 

I'm convinced that a lot of plagiarism is unintentional, a matter of ignorance or laziness, rather than criminal intent.  Did you know, for instance, that if you copy so much from a resource that it makes up the bulk of your work, even if you give the author full credit, that's plagiarism?  I found this out just in time for this post from a site called plagiarism dot ORG. 

I also learned from Jane Friedman, visiting assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati, that if the article you're referencing is very short, you can quote only one or two lines.

These facts are of special concern for bloggers, whose posts and the articles they reference are usually fairly short.  

Also, for this post, I wanted to use two lines from the Beatles song, All You Need is Love.  But after reading Using Song Lyrics at Writing-World.com, I realized I COULD NOT use these lines without written permission from the owner.  Using titles of songs are okay, but the concept of fair use does not apply to lyrics. 

So how can we use research without getting into trouble?

A lot of it comes down to taking scrupulous notes and checking your final draft against the source material for accidental duplication of the author's words.

Here are three excellent resources to guide you.

Plagiarism:  What It is and How to Recognize and Avoid it.  This site covers how to recognize unacceptable and acceptable paraphrases and strategies for avoiding plagiarism.

plagiarism dot Org.  Gives a definition and examples of plagiarism.

Purdue Online Writing Lab.  "Rules beginners aren't aware of or don't know how to follow."

With practice and by taking meticulous notes, there are correct and legal ways to learn from others and pass it on as our own.