Constant Content

I am a bit paranoid about the possibility of plagiarism. I never copy work that someone else has done but I do pull research from many sources. I also put my articles through Copyscape. Sometimes Copyscape will bring up phrases that appear elsewhere. I am currently doing an article on sleep apnea. The sentence 'Sleep apnea is a common condition' comes up as found elsewhere. It's not surprising to me that it has been written before. How does Constant Content view this? Is this something to worry about? It almost seems like nothing could be totally original. There are only so many ways to string words together. Thanks, Linda

If you write original articles you have nothing to worry about. Running an original article you just wrote through Copyscape sounds like a waste of time and money since you know you wrote the article. We all use sources and for sure you can find common phrases out there like the one you quoted. Sometimes there is really only so many ways to say something - especially with statements of fact.

So, I don't know if any of this information is helpful to you, but the school I went to used a plagiarism program that sounds like it has a similar flaw. It would highlight very common wording or even dates as being plagiarized. In some instances, it was good to know that wording was a little overused and could be stated in a better way, but for the most part my professor just said to keep the plagiarism percentage low. I don't know if copyscape gives you a percentage, but our program gives of readout, for example, of 13% plagiarism. Our goal was to keep the percentage under 10%. None of the article or essay was necessarily plagiarized, but it was also less generic sounding with a lower plagiarism percentage.

Anyway, I wouldn't worry about it too much. I don't think anyone will bust you for a single, vague sentence being plagiarism in an article for of original content

In fact, Constant-Content has strongly urged us NOT to use tools such as CopyScape in the past. Writing what moves from our brains to the keyboard and not copying and pasting is a good practice. A few common phrases are inevitable but it's unlikely that you'll type out a carbon copy of anyone else's work if you write from your brain. Though a million monkeys typing for millions of years may eventually plagiarize Shakespear.

I think Celeste may be right. I had similar concerns initially. Generally if I wrote something that didn't require research and came straight from my own noggin, I trusted it. But one article required quite a bit of research and that worried me. Was there even the slightest chance I had echoed someone else? As plagiarism is an immediate cause for dismissal, I didn't want to take the risk.

I put every sentence of that article through a standard Google search, in quotation marks, sentence by sentence. The entire article.

Not one sentence was found in the millions of Google pages. Not one single sentence. I was dumbfounded. Could my words have been that original? Surely someone, somewhere, had worded things the same? But no, not according to Google.

After that I relaxed. I stopped agonizing that somehow my words would be a mirror of others. If that article, which was heavily researched, could pass muster then I must be doing it right. Now I trust myself. I trust in the uniqueness of my own wording to be different, even if the topic has probably been done a gazillion times.

PS - I never copy and paste, as Celeste mentioned. Everything gets worded in my own way.

I will copy and paste only if it is going in quotes and properly cited. To just say never copy and paste a source isn't quite correct IMHO.

With SEO, and the popularity of topics circulating the Internet, it is next to impossible to write a completely original article on a popular topic (by that I mean to have not a single common phrasing pop up). C-C is very good about discerning what is just popular writing versus someone taking complete sections of text from other places. In other words, if you wrote the article, and run it through copyscape, which does seem unnecessary, places you have common phrases with you shouldn't have other less common phrasing with, that would be very odd.

For example: An article on short sales

Short sales are popular for homes facing foreclosure. (This phrase might be common)
Short sales are a win-win situation for homeowners avoiding foreclosure, real estate agents trying to stay in business, home buyers looking to get a deal, and mortgage lenders needing more money than what the home would net from a bank auction. (This phrase that I just wrote shouldn't be a complete sentence in another piece, there are too many words for it to be just a case of coincidence, although that is a rather long sentence.)

HTH

Though a million monkeys typing for millions of years may eventually plagiarize Shakespear.

"You will hang like an icicle on a Dutchman's Beard" and "Screw your courage to the sticking place" (Lady Macbeth).

Celeste, I just can't believe that, even after a million years, monkeys could type Shakespeare

I was doing some research about plagiarism, and found it is often considered legitimate to write the exact words of someone else IF they are common knowledge and they are already written in the simplest form possible. For example, there is no reason to rewrite "Albany is the capital of New York" to "New York's capital city is the great city of Albany."

Can anyone confirm this?

-S

Or, for that matter, "Sleep apnea is a common condition," to "Sleep Apnea is a fact of life for many people."

In this example, I think you could get away with "Albany is the capital city of New York." It's a common enough phrase. But if too many common phrases are taken from one piece of writing , bells will go off.

Like many writers here, I generally write what I know. But when I do have to research, I use several sources. I don't copy/paste anything. I take short notes based on research and even those notes are in my own words. It's easier for me to retain what I've learned and put a piece together that is entirely from "my brain" to the keyboard.

Sophia, Google "fair use" and you'll find information about what's considered fair use.

SophiaStrosberg wrote:I was doing some research about plagiarism, and found it is often considered legitimate to write the exact words of someone else IF they are common knowledge and they are already written in the simplest form possible. For example, there is no reason to rewrite "Albany is the capital of New York" to "New York's capital city is the great city of Albany."
-S

I prefer conciseness, even if someone said that before, over long flowery phrases. How do you improve on "Albany is the capital of New York" except maybe "New York State capital Albany, is..." It is just a fact that does not need to be sourced or credited. Who cares that Joe made that statement?

Now "the great city of Albany" may or may not be true and might need to be sourced. I've not visited - is it really nice or even above average? I just don't know?