I was working on hundreds of articles per week and decided to outsource some of the work to friends who were also passionate writers. It was working well for a while. The client paid well, gave lots of work weekly and most of the articles required simple Internet research. Then one day, I got my last paycheck from them along with an article they wanted reworked. I didn’t realize it was my last paycheck until I stopped receiving any more work from this particular client.
This was rather drastic but well it taught me a lesson. The article I had received for rework was appended with an article checker tool. On pasting this article, originally penned by my friend, I found it had three lines that were already available on various websites. Three harmless lines lazily lifted by my not-ill-meaning friend just caused me a lot of money and a good client. Welcome to the world of plagiarism.
Most writers are driven by an itch… the itch is to scribble and make sense of the world around, express an idea or opinion or just draw up a parallel world of fiction. We all come with a rather good intention of lending a helping hand to those not so savvy with the written word, offering our writing services and expecting some remuneration in return. The web as we know it today is driven by content and the market for writers is immense. This, in turn, generates volumes of work for the writing community and may lead to exploring convenient shortcuts on the writer’s part, just to meet those ‘yesterday’ deadlines. This is one of the major causes of innocent plagiarism.
But the problem is that plagiarism is never ‘innocent’. It comes under the gamut of Intellectual Property Rights violation. Most writers don’t really understand what plagiarism is. Here is something to explain it. We, as content writers, use the web to cull out research material for most articles we write. In doing so, we often harmlessly paste one line below the other and reword carefully… just to get the job done faster maybe. Well, what we forget here is that research material needs to be the basis of thought and not the actual substance of the article. Anyway, one line missed in this process and there you have plagiarized content. There is also a case where a phrase we find in our research just says it all. “That is exactly the expression I need,” you say. You write your basic sentence then you copy the phrase and paste it, voila – plagiarized.
Sounds rather harsh, but plagiarism entails using any already existing content, in part or full, intentionally or unintentionally (you just creatively wrote the same lines someone else did by chance). As a responsible writer, it is not just our duty to write what’s good but also what’s new (at least in expression).
Before the Advanced Search feature was launched on search sites it was hard to detect online plagiarism. But now, all I need to do is paste the suspect content within quotes in the advanced search tab and I will know if it’s fresh enough. This is the most common way editors detect rip offs on the web. This is also a very useful tool for writers. To check an entire article we even have free article checker tools online, www.articlechecker.com for instance. We should make it a habit to copyedit our content and then run it for a plagiarism check.
Many of us have clients who are not really net savvy, we give them some quick refurbished content thinking it doesn’t matter… they won’t know anyway. Well, that may be the case but the problem is, your client cares less about this than the guy who owns the website you lifted from. Anti-plagiarism tools like Copyscape, help website owners know if their content is getting snitched anywhere. The repercussions are of course legal action under Intellectual Property Protection laws that are now in place globally.
So, what’s the way around? After all, any idea can only be expressed in only limited ways! The smartest thing to do is learn to quote and reference. If you quote it with the author’s name or say you stumbled upon this line while browsing the web, you’re not only protecting your originality but also being magnanimous to acknowledge another’s brilliance. If the need arises, seek permission to use the content, almost no one will say no. Even if you are using content you found on a public forum, don’t pass it off for being original. Moreover, content available on online encyclopedias are free for using, but I think if I put this straight into any piece of writing, I’m already not being creative.
And after all this banter and spooking, I encourage you all to pour your heart out through your words but remember to treat your content like your baby (whether it will have your name on the page or not). This baby is your creation, and not only do you need to groom it well, it must have true substance and be only your resemblance. As for plagiarizing this article, I allow anyone to paste any or all sections or it anywhere, just to spread the message and weed this ugly little wart of plagiarism from our writers’ ethics.
Editor's note: Most articles submitted to Chillibreeze go through a selection process. Only 30 percent of submitted articles are accepted for publication on the Chillibreeze.com featured article list. All accepted articles are edited and proofread for glaring errors of punctuation and grammar. Sentence structure is changed in certain cases and sometimes, entire sections are rewritten. If you notice any errors that have slipped through the cracks, do let us know! (Email us at info at chillibreeze dot com).
Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in May, 2011. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.
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