updated 3 may 06
Avoiding Plagiarism

Imagine This

SHAZAM! You're 17 years old. You write a book, submit it to a publisher, and they award you a $500,000 contract. Your book is published a year later, and you become a worldwide sensation -- a rich, successful college freshman who keeps skipping class to appear on TV news and talk shows.

Then a funny thing happens. Someone notices that your writing looks similar to another author's writing. For example:

	You		Another Author
	Every inch of me had been cut, filed, steamed, exfoliated, polished, painted, or moisturized. I didn't look a thing like Opal Mehta. Opal Mehta didn't own five pairs of shoes so expensive they could have been traded in for a small sailboat.		There isn't a single inch of me that hasn't been pinched, cut, filed, painted, sloughed, blown dry, or moisturized. … Because I don't look a thing like Mia Thermopolis. Mia Thermopolis never had fingernails. Mia Thermopolis never had blond highlights.

"So what?" you say. "It's not like I copied."

But thousands of readers, as well as your publisher, start taking a closer look at your writing. They find other similarities like this one:

	You		Another Author
	In my defense, it was hard to be uptight and prickly while surrounded by beautiful, fashionable people all telling me how good I'd look in that shade and what this color would do to enhance my cheekbones.		And it is sort of hard when all these beautiful, fashionable people are telling you how good you'd look in this and how much that would bring out your cheekbones.

"Look, I'm no cheater! I don't plagiarize," you protest. "I didn't copy a single sentence word for word."

But your book gets pulled off every bookshelf in every bookstore in the world. You lose your $500,000 contract and the promise to publish future books. And your college considers kicking you out.

Why?

You plagiarized. Those cute little rewording games may have worked in elementary school, but they don't fly in the real world.

Even if it's not word for word, following an author's train of thought within a paragraph point by point is plagiarism. It's lazy and dishonest. It's letting someone else think for you. And it's wrong.

So How Do I Avoid Plagiarizing?

The example above is a true story. The saddest thing about it is that plagiarism is so ridiculously easy to avoid. Here's the single magic step to making sure you don't plagiarize: Don't look at the original text when you're writing.

A lot of people take notes word for word. Bad idea. Here's a better way:

Language is so infinitely variable that you have more chances of winning the lottery than of managing to recreate the original author's wording and train of thought.

The key is taking brief notes and reorganizing them. If you look at the original text when you're writing, most likely you'll end up plagiarizing.

Why?

Our brains have a way of "fixing" ideas into specific words. It takes more effort to rework a passage past the point of plagiarism, than it does simply to write from your own notes.

So save yourself all that extra work. Take brief notes, reorganize them, and then write in your own voice. There's no excuse for letting someone else's voice drown out your own.