If I, for example, took two ideas in two different books and combined them in one, would I have my own “original” idea? If not, then wouldn’t everyone’s book be considered “plagiarism” because ideas are passed down through the generations, and no matter how hard you try, it’s impossible to be original truly? I hear that you should cite other’s works. If I use the phrase “Knock! Knock! Who’s there?” in a character dialogue, should I be citing Shakespeare because he coined the phrase? Probably not, because that would be absurd, right? Personally, what I would consider plagiarism is DIRECTLY copying someone’s work and claiming it to be yours. For example, just copying an entire book and sending it in as your manuscript. However, to copy someone’s idea, slightly modify it, and just stay quiet about it, without even citing the source, is fine, in my opinion, because that person likely got it from another person as well. Every writer has his or her influences. If it would be silly to cite every coined term, then it would be silly to cite every phrase as well, as long as it’s in the appropriate context. If someone asks me what I think of imagination, and I say “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited, whereas imagination encircles the world.” Without citing Einstein, slightly improving the quote and modifying it, would that be plagiarism ---even--- if it is what I think? Everyone gives credit to Einstein for phrasing that term, but what about the hundred other quotes like it which Einstein likely modified as well? (Of course, all the credit goes to him.) I spend a lot of time on certain websites. I save certain quotes, sentences, and ideas that I adore. I don’t mention who came up with them. I saved them, so they are my ideas too. I will use them in the right scenarios, mix them, etc. I think a good example would be mixing recipes. I’d imagine a lot of people, including myself, take someone else’s recipe for a cake or something and sometimes change the ingredients around, thereby making your own recipe for a special cake. Regardless of what you do, you are still yourself. Here is an interesting article: http://www.poynter.org/2013/why-we-should-stop-criminalizing-practices-that-are-confused-with-plagiarism/208214/ From the article: "5. Literary allusions -- even a mosaic of esoteric ones -- are NOT plagiarism. When my friend Howell Raines wrote an influential profile of the ambitious son of another Florida politician, he began: “Will the son also rise?” Some alert readers recognized that phrase as an allusion to a book by Ernest Hemingway. Another set of readers, familiar with their Bibles, recognized that Papa had borrowed his title from the Book of Ecclesiastes. Raines got the benefit of both sources, using a phrase that was clear on its face for readers who recognized neither. Allusion differs from plagiarism in that it begs for detection. Delight is caused by a recognition of the borrowing. 8. Writing for genres -- such as the legal brief or the sermon -- in which there is a long tradition of borrowing without attribution is not plagiarism. There are books of sermons from which preachers are encouraged to borrow. Judicial decisions are often written by law clerks. Every teacher I know will speak words during a writing workshop that have been uttered or written by others. Credit to the source should be given when it really matters, but there is no need to gum up a good lesson with needless attribution. 9. Copying from other writers in what are considered collaborative ventures --newsrooms, wire services, press releases, textbook authorship -- is not plagiarism. You are writing about drought conditions in Florida. You consult what we used to call the clips. You find that a colleague, Joe Blow, reported on the issue five years ago. A paragraph in that story describes the situation back then perfectly. With approval of your editor, you drop that graph into your story as background. No problem. Writing in most cases is a social activity. Editors re-write leads or insert paragraphs. Basic information is borrowed from the AP or a press release. These are not short cuts taken by cheaters. They are essential moves of the craft that should not be criminalized. 10. Copying from or borrowing the general ideas and issues that are emerging as part of the zeitgeist is not plagiarism. Here, one last time, is Posner: “The most important distinction between plagiarism of verbal passages…and plagiarism of ideas… -- a distinction that suggests that much copying of ideas isn’t plagiarism at all – is that old ideas are constantly being rediscovered by people unaware that the ideas had been discovered already….A rediscoverer or independent discoverer is not a copier, hence not a plagiarist. My decriminalizing these activities does not mean that I approve of them. It means I can consider them, act on them, even criticize them in a different frame than the stigmatizing one that the word plagiarism requires. I can use a scalpel, not a sledgehammer." What do you think?
I suggested in another thread a while back that all 'fan fiction' is plagiarism by definition and was roundly criticized for saying so. Didn't change my mind, but I was impressed by how strongly many here felt about the subject. It seems to me that when you appropriate the creative work of someone else and present it as your own, you've done something wrong, and in most cases, you know it. Of course it's possible to come up with an idea independently of another author, and even express it/present it using the same words, but one should be prepared to be suspected of plagiarism.
"Plagiarism" is the wrong term here. The activity that leads to legal issues is copyright violation. Plagiarism leads to academic and other professional issues. Edited to add: For example, the long quote that's apparently from the linked article wouldn't be plagiarism, because you cited it. However, it might very well be a copyright violation.
Nowadays, plagiarism is plagiarism when it is run through a plagiarism search engine and the result says yes. Be careful who you borrow from. Court cases are won and lost on who makes the better case. It is like sampling in music; if the author can prove their 'thing' is what sold your book, you lose. This is rare these days, but some publishers still go after it. If you ever get a cease and desist letter, demand the evidence, there usually isn't any.
A plagiarism search engine isn't really an answer. If a person is working hard to figure out how to avoid getting caught for taking someone else's words, the answer is to NOT TAKE SOMEONE ELSE'S WORDS. Refraining from using someone else's ideas is a fuzzier and more difficult matter. But literal words? The answer, barring figuring out the legalities of the occasional short quote, is pretty easy: Don't.
But "passing" that tool doesn't mean that there's no plagiarism. The tool is a way to catch some, not all, of the plagiarism that would otherwise go undetected.
This is just me talking through my hat, but I reckon if you know you're stealing somebody else's actual work ...then don't. However, apparently stealing somebody else's idea is another thing altogether, as long as you turn it into your own at some point. And if you were to combine two separate ideas from two other people (authors) and turn the combination into something that is uniquely yours, I reckon that will probably be fine. Just be sure to respect copyright as regards quotes. (Easier said than done, because copyright law is so complex, and in some cases contradictory. And it varies from country to country.) If you want to play safe, don't consciously copy somebody else's idea. Why would you want to re-write somebody else's book anyway? If somebody else's story triggers an IDEA for your own, however, that's part of 'the process' and many authors do it. As for 'knock, knock, who's there?' That may have been written into a play by Shakespeare, but who knows where HE got it from? And quoting Shakespeare without attribution is pretty safe anyway. Lots of authors do it. In fact, Shakespeare features in many book titles, never mind what the characters or authors say inside!
I think the root of plagiarism is deception. It's okay to use someone else's work (in terms of plagiarism, not copyright) as long as you aren't pretending it's your own work. Using vampires in your novel isn't plagiarism because everybody knows you didn't invent vampires - there's no deception, there. Lack of originality isn't plagiarism, and complete originality probably isn't a goal worth striving for. Using someone else's words is fine as long as you use quotation marks or whatever else to indicate they aren't yours. So of course literary allusions aren't plagiarism - the whole point of an allusion is that you expect the audience to be familiar with the phrase/image/idea. "Will the son also rise?" is fairly meaningless if you don't recognize it as a pun and allusion. And has anyone actually suggested that literary allusions be criminalized? Most of the ideas listed in the linked article seemed to be pretty clearly not plagiarism. The only one that gave me pause was the reporter who lifted a paragraph from a previous article written by someone else. That seems dodgy, to me.
I think there's a real genre issue here, and I don't mean genres of fiction. When you're talking about citations, it makes me think that you're writing an academic or scholarly work, in which case you need to be very careful about citing your sources, even if they are just ideas and not actual facts or examples. However, if you're talking about writing fiction, it's a whole different ballgame. J.K. Rowling drew from thousands of years of mythology, but some of it (don't know which bits off the top of my head, read it somewhere) actually has sources, named people in ancient Greece or Rome. She certainly didn't need to cite, say, Aristotle or Homer every time she introduced a new beasty. And both the Harry Potter series and large chunks of the X-Men take place at schools for children with unusual abilities. No problem. However, if you write Larry Blotter and the Magician's Rock, set at Pigpimple's boarding school for warlocks, you're going to have some problems.
