Expert: Susan Rand - 1/9/2009

Question
Dear Susan,
I'm Tom. I was wondering about the word 'plagiarism.' - I'm not sure whether you're the right expert for this. If not, could you give me a tip who I can turn to perhaps? Thanks! -
If i'm not mistaken it is when you take the writings or ideas of another person and pass them off as your own.
But I was thinking: if someone wants to write a text, say an article in a newspaper or so, doesn't he HAVE to get ideas somewhere, or, if he's got some, doesn't he HAVE to do a bit of research to bolster his writing and in doing this doesn't he HAVE to use some material that he found WHILE doing research? Where's the line to be drawn between simply using research material and plagiarism?
Does this have a lot to do with quoting (citation)? Could you explain this to me a bit?
And if it does, where can i find all the rules about quoting properly. I've heard that there are many rules. E.g., i've read that there is something called the MLA Style Sheet. What is it, and does it have any bearing on this subject? How?
Thank you very much in advance if you could help me out here!
Best regards,
Tom

Answer
Hello Tom:

This is a problem that has been worrying me for some time. As far as I know, there are no hard and fast rules (codified into law) about how much you can use before committing plagiarism. I have over 60 paid keyword articles published on the Net, without any accusations of plagiarism. I did not use quotes without attribution, but took the information I found and wrote about it in my own words.

Some publishers/vendors have software they use to check articles against information on the Net, but what the standards are I don't know. Much depends on how much you quote and whether you attribute the quote to the source. Of course, every writer must get their material from somewhere. I've had whole articles lifted complete off sites that paid me for them, but unless it happens in bulk, they are unwilling to spend the money to fight it. Therefore, there is a lot of abuse.

As for the MLA Style Sheet, I would suggest you google the same. You can also visit the copyright laws by googling them. I would do this for you, but if I leave this answer I may not get it back again.

I hope this helps. If it does, a nice rating would be greatly appreciated. I am proud of my high scores over 1350 questions.

And thank you for writing!