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What is plagiarism?

Essentially, plagiarism is the theft of another writers work. If you use the work of some on else you are committing plagiarism.

What constitutes as plagiarism?

Any use of another persons work. You may find something online that would look great in your article but if you don’t use citations and clearly state that the work is not yours you could be liable for criminal charges and have to pay compensation to the victim.

Any writing that you find anywhere, written by anyone is not yours-unless you have written it yourself. As such, magazines, books, ezines-anything is out of your reach as a writer.

What else should you watch out for?

Ever ghost written for someone? Usually, that means you aren’t allowed to reproduce the article or use it anywhere. Do be careful that your employer/contractor pays you for the work or doesn’t use it at all. I recently had a problem where I had written three articles for a contractor but he hadn’t paid me and hadn’t expressed an interest in using them. As such I placed them on my blog etc and received a rather nasty comment form an unknown person.

The gentleman in question basically accused me of stealing the work from his website. Luckily for me, he was quite understanding and took it down-he even said he would keep me in mind for future projects.

That was a positive outcome-considering the circumstances. He could have taken me to court and sued me but I had actually kept the emails that were dated prior to when the article was placed on his site etc. So that helped me in the end.

It could just have easily ended very badly though and it is a mistake that I don’t intend to make again!

How do you avoid committing plagiarism?

Don’t use someone else’s work! I don’t even cite the work of another writer because sometimes writers don’t like ther work being used in any form. That way I find it safest to just use my own- then I don’t get into any trouble at all!

You will do whatever works for you. Just be sure that you have the permission of the writer to cite his/her work within your own work and you’ll be fine. Or you could just do what I do and avoid the whole charade entirely.