Just a Little Information about Plagiarism

Some people don’t care.   They copy, paste, and post.   Some do a touch of tweeking before posting.  Some are so afraid that if they are about to write about “The Value of Cow’s Milk” and see an item with the same or similar title, immediately delete their item, although they wrote every word from their personal experience.

There are those who’ll post an image, unaware it is not for public dissemination.  There are those who will fling an image into an article, assuming it is okay.  There are those afraid to post an image beyond one they took themselves, despite the quantity of free images available.

All of these categories are of negative value.

In reality, (and you can hire and pay a lawyer to verify) plagiarism is; “The act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.”

The words are in italics and set off in quotes because they are not my words, they come from the Law Dictionary.  And I am quoting them.  I am not taking credit for them, I am not ‘passing them off as the product of my mind’.

What I have done in using the definition is NOT plagiarism.   I am giving credit.  I am using that definition with attribution to substantiate my article.

What you are to ‘take away’ from the above explanation is that if you quote something, you admit it.

Giving attribution is NOT plagiarism, and makes your article stronger when the reader appreciates you aren’t making up something, you have an authority.

No one reading this article will have the slightest sense of plagiarism.

So that is your first insight.

The second insight is that when you write something from your own head it is not plagiarism.   If you write historical or topical or scientific articles, you can’t fly off into fantasy world.  King Henry VIII of England had Six wives.  You can’t change that.   Everyone in the world who writes about King Henry VIII must get their information from reliable historical sources.

If you read the sources, if you make notes, if you think about what you’ve read, and put it into your own words, with your own insights, it is not plagiarism.

When it comes to using images, there is ‘Fair Use’.   Not to get deep into legalese, when an image is used simply as a decoration, where in no way doesn’t the writer claim to own the image, this is not a breach of copyright.  If one were to go to a photography site and post someone else’s photograph, certainly they have breached the law. But if one uses the photograph simply to ‘pretty up’ a post, the worst that could happen is the owner request it be removed.

Simply put, one makes no revenue from a decoration.

When you write an item, facts can’t change.  The way you use them can.   How you would write about Henry VIII is different from my style.

As long as you don’t copy my item and jiggle a few words and post it as your own but write it in your own way, with a different structure of paragraphs and emphasis, you are not plagiarizing.   As long as you don’t go after private images but take those available, you are protected by ‘fair use’.