# Did you ever plagiarize anything? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 19, 2019, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668 "2019-11-19T20:12:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Personal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Personal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Personal)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2019, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/21 "2019-11-19T23:27:46Z")
> [@Yllaria](#): > > No, but for one high school class I wrote a book report for a book that didn’t exist. It was long enough ago that I don’t remember any details about the “book”, except that several characters were vampires. In eighth grade I wrote a book report for a Wonder book,[A Visit to the Hospital](https://www.amazon.com/visit-hospital-Wonder-books/dp/B0007G0TYY). I think the report was longer than the text of the book. ---
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2019, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/22 "2019-11-19T23:28:48Z")
In high school, I sent an entry to the school’s literary magazine. It was a minor poem by Wordsworth. They rejected it. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2019, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/23 "2019-11-19T23:28:58Z")
Nope, never plagiarized anyone. But the Saudi ambassador to Norway, or more probably a writer on staff, plagiarized parts of an opinion piece I wrote and got accepted to the online edition of Norway’s main newspaper of record. It was a response to a shitty opinion piece by defenders of alternative medicine. An opinion piece titled “We are not extremists” published in the same paper a few weeks later supposedly by the Saudi ambassador in part used my general arguments, as well as including two whole sentences lifted straight from my text. How do I know it wasn’t just coincidence? Well the whole text was a poorly written mess, the sentences were pretty out of place and the only hits on those exact words in Google were my text and that one. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2019, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/24 "2019-11-19T23:29:02Z")
Never, but I was accused of plagiarism when I decided to add a couple of “big words” to one of my English essay’s in Grade 10. They were shocked that a Latin immigrant knew the word “mercurial”. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Swampwolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Swampwolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swampwolf)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2019, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/25 "2019-11-19T23:29:07Z")
My senior year in High School, I took every excerpt from (the fictional) _The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,_ alphabetized them, typed them up and added a references page. I’m not proud of this. Not ashamed either, but not proud. I got an A. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2019, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/26 "2019-11-19T23:30:04Z")
> [@snfaulkner](#): > > In high school, I sent an entry to the school’s literary magazine. It was a minor poem by Wordsworth. They rejected it. I see what you did there. ---
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2019, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/27 "2019-11-19T23:45:22Z")
The academic category of academic dishonesty is broader than using someone else’s work and includes submitting the same paper for two different classes, unless permission has been granted ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/28 "2019-11-20T00:02:23Z")
I cut and paste code snippets from Stack Overflow from time to time, usually without attribution. That’s both plagiarism and copyright violation, if anyone wanted to push the issue. Now, I’m not talking whole procedures, but things like, how do convert an actual file path to an NSURL. I could consult the documentation, but honestly, Stack Overflow is faster. Actually, Google is generally faster than looking for functions on the stupid Office ribbon, too, which replaced reasonable and easy to use menus. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/29 "2019-11-20T00:36:05Z")
> [@snfaulkner](#): > > in high school, i sent an entry to the school’s literary magazine. It was a minor poem by wordsworth. They rejected it. 😃 😃 :Da ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/30 "2019-11-20T01:28:38Z")
When I was in the 3rd grade, I turned in a creative writing piece that was basically the first fifteen or twenty minutes of the movie _Gremlins_. The teacher was impressed enough to read it in front of the class, who immediately called me out for copying the story. In my defense, I a) didn’t understand that I’d done anything wrong, and b) didn’t consider the possibility that my teacher would not share my exact taste in movies and wouldn’t recognize the source immediately. I’ve also reused many of my own term papers, but I don’t regard that as remotely unethical. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/31 "2019-11-20T02:51:47Z")
Never! Not myself or anyone else. I always value originality. ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/32 "2019-11-20T03:06:45Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > John Fogerty was once sued for allegedly plagiarizing himself. Fogerty had signed a contract where he surrendered the royalties to his early song. He later wrote a song, “The Old Man Down The Road”, which the company claimed was based on an earlier Fogerty song, “Run Through the Jungle”, which they now owned the rights to. So they said Fogerty owed them royalties for the use of his own song. (Fogerty won the case.) That is not plagiarism\*, it’s copyright infringement. And if you’ve conveyed your copyright, yeah, that can happen. I am glad he won, though. \*Plagiarism: The act of presenting another person’s work as your own ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/33 "2019-11-20T03:12:54Z")
Maybe? Nah, I don’t think so, anyway not on purpose. I will say, and have said here before, I wrote a book. I thought it was very original, and I sold it to a big five publisher (only there were six then). My agent told me a couple of other writers that she thought I ought to read because I would be compared to them. In most cases I had never heard of them. But I dutifully went off to the library. And one of those books, oh my god. It had so many similar plot points that if I had read it before I wrote my book, I wouldn’t have written my book. I would have felt like I was plagiarizing. And if I read both books, I would definitely have thought that whoever wrote the later one had stolen some ideas. On the other hand, stealing ideas is not plagiarism. Stealing plot points is not plagiarism. There is case law about this. But I wouldn’t want to do it. I have since run into one or two “writers” who claim to never read anything, in case they might accidentally plagiarize somebody. No idea how that’s working out for them. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/34 "2019-11-20T03:20:09Z")
Picture it: 9th grade. Beck being the youngest person in advanced English/creative writing. We were tasked with making a poetry book as half the grade for semester. I got a big book-o’-poetry from the bookstore. I took several poems and reworked them. As in ‘Trees’ by Kilmer I turned into ‘Clouds’-- yada yada yada. Drew in lots of pretty sketches. I received the highest mark in the class for my poetry book. I felt soooooooo guilty. I never owned up to it. As soon as I got the book back from the teacher, I shredded it. This is the first time I’ve ever mentioned it to anyone. I still feel bad. But, now I realize it didn’t change the world or ruin my life. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/35 "2019-11-20T03:36:31Z")
> [@Gatopescado](#): > > Never, but I was accused of plagiarism when I decided to add a couple of “big words” to one of my English essay’s in Grade 10. They were shocked that a Latin immigrant knew the word “mercurial”. > > 😉 cite? ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/36 "2019-11-20T03:37:41Z")
> [@Beckdawrek](#): > > Picture it: 9th grade. Was this in Sicily? ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/37 "2019-11-20T03:58:36Z")
Maybe. There was definitely some hints of a gay erotica story I read in the substantial paper I turned in for my ninth grade fictional paper. However, it was pretty much the standard boy meets boy or boy meets girl stuff of a million novels and films. I may have self plagiarised in college, but that would depend. There’s certain works in political science and economics undergraduate reading that are so essential, I can’t imagine not needing to cite them in more than one paper. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/38 "2019-11-20T04:02:29Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > Was this in Sicily? You so funny. That’s exactly where I stole that. (Oops, did it again) ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/39 "2019-11-20T04:10:14Z")
I don’t think I have ever plagiarised anything, but sometimes when I write a story the influences hove a bit too closely. I have one idea that no matter how I try, just feels too much like _Mask of Zorro_. Another one is an inverted-gendered _Romancing The Stone_. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, better movies than I’ll ever make are blatantly rehashed ideas. But that’s the closest I get to plagiarism. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/40 "2019-11-20T04:10:15Z")
> [@Beckdawrek](#): > > You so funny. That’s exactly where I stole that. (Oops, did it again) And now Brittany Spears? Your plagiarism knows no bounds. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668.md?page=3)