Thank you for your lovely comment. You’re right, I was being a little wry with the post. It’s tough to work out where the line is drawn when we come up with original writing, and I hope that having an original take on a subject marks it out as our own, as you say. I remember so well the Enid Blyton situation even though I was seven – the hot shame and fear of being discovered. I’m not sure I could cope with that feeling now as an adult! Not worth it from my perspective!
Good to see you on here.

Jen

I appreciate your article, but I would call what you call plagiarism research and paraphrasing. Isn’t plagiarism “a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else and is presented as being your own work?” (http://www.google.com/url?q=http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn%3Fs%3Dplagiarism&sa=X&ei=6NEvTJywIcP38Abr9MX_Bg&ved=0CBEQpAMoAA&usg=AFQjCNERXQv_RbSX3toxalqYJyPwEVOuuw)

Learning about subjects by reading and digesting material from several sources, then writing about it in your own words from your own opinion or point of view is not plagiarism. I reference my sources even if I’m not quoting or even paraphrasing if I’m not writing from my own opinion or point of view. As I read I copy or paraphrase and write down the source. But if I’m writing from my own point of view or frame of reference, whatever I’ve read or learned are the jumping off point for my own original writing.

Your article here is very original with a twist on common word usage. I consider that original writing. Just because hundreds of people have written about a subject doesn’t mean you don’t have an original take on it, like here.

If something is my own knowledge that I’ve learned from my own experiences or things I learned back in school that everyone is supposed to know (common knowledge), I don’t site references because there are too many, or the facts or knowledge are so old we don’t have references. We don’t quote the unknown person in ancient history who first wrote “1+1=2″.

At first I found this article a little confusing, but I realized it’s tongue-in-cheek with the use of the word plagiarism.

I’m sure when we were all very young and first learning to do research and write, we copied some phrase or paragraph without referencing our quotes. We have all long since learned not to do that, I hope.

Sherri
Sherri–Being the Change I Wish to See´s last blog ..Twisted bin Logic…Beware-