# 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:** 4
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/61 "2019-11-20T21:57:22Z")
If self-plagiarism is a thing, one time in middle school I technically turned in the same short story twice, to the same teacher, in the same creative writing class. It happened to be twice as long the second time, but the first half was nearly unchanged. (She was okay with this - I checked in advance.) ---
**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, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/62 "2019-11-20T22:17:09Z")
One more time: > [@oxford](#): > > Plagiarism: The practice of presenting **someone else’s** ideas or work as your own. [emphasis mine] > [@copyleaks](#): > > Plagiarism is the “wrongful appropriation” and “stealing and publication” of **another author’s** “language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions” and the representation of them as one’s own original work. [emphasis mine] You can’t plagiarize yourself! What you are doing may not be ethical in a given situation, but it’s not plagiarism. If you sold the rights to one of your creations, and then created it, or essentially it, again, you might be guilty of some kind of rights violation. But it’s not plagiarism. Although, considering how prevalent the use of this term is on the board populated by the smartest folks in the world, I guess that meaning could change. But at this point, 11/20/19, I don’t think it has. ---
**Author:** ![StGermain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stgermain/32/2868_2.png) [@StGermain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StGermain)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/63 "2019-11-20T22:36:51Z")
> [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > In high school, I once handed in an essay where the first paragraph was a straight up rip-off of something an older friend of mine wrote. I didn’t realize he’d published it. And my teacher, a contemporary of my older friend, really had it out for me. When he found out and reported me, I nearly got expelled. Sounds like the plot to _Finding Forrester_. StG ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/64 "2019-11-20T22:44:06Z")
> [@StGermain](#): > > Sounds like the plot to _Finding Forrester_. > > StG But what if I had the screenwriter for _Finding Forrester_ come on and make a heartfelt post, only to reveal that I, not he, was the author of that post? Would you STILL accuse me of lifting significant elements of my earlier post from _Finding Forrester_, without appropriate attribution? ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/65 "2019-11-20T22:52:06Z")
> [@FairyChatMom](#): > > When I was in elementary, we were taught you can’t copy - you have to write in your own words. I took that to mean if the source you read used the word “automobile” it was OK to copy the sentence and put “car” instead. I never copied entire reports, but there were a few sentences that followed my understanding of “no copying.” Pretty much this for me as well. I never copied an entire report or anything, but I definitely copied entire sentences from my source material, or at best only slightly reworded them, without proper attribution. I remember a report for AP English in high school where my teacher complimented my use of… that device where you start several sentences in a row with the same word in order to drive home a point, I forget what that’s called now. But I have to admit it wasn’t actually mine, it came from one of the literary critics I used as a source. I assume the statute of limitations on that has run out by now. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/66 "2019-11-20T22:52:13Z")
Well sort of maybe - I want to talk to my lawyer. I used to go to a school that gave homework out like it was going out of style. It would take me the entire time I got home till I went to bed and the next morning to get it all done before the bus picked me up - it was a little bit of hell on earth for children. To give me some relief my mom who was and is a angel did some of my homework for me, and since typed assignments were allowed no one questioned that. So in that first yes I handed in my mom’s work as my own, however she did give me that specific permission to do so. So is it plagiarism to put your name on another person’s work if they explicadally gave such permission to do so? The second part I found out later that she plagiarized such work like the dickens, However did I plagiarize since she did the work and gave me permission to use her work as my own. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2019, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/67 "2019-11-20T22:56:16Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > Well sort of maybe - I want to talk to my lawyer. > > I used to go to a school that gave homework out like it was going out of style. It would take me the entire time I got home till I went to bed and the next morning to get it all done before the bus picked me up - it was a little bit of hell on earth for children. To give me some relief my mom who was and is a angel did some of my homework for me, and since typed assignments were allowed no one questioned that. So in that first yes I handed in my mom’s work as my own, however she did give me that specific permission to do so. > > So is it plagiarism to put your name on another person’s work if they explicadally gave such permission to do so? > > The second part I found out later that she plagiarized such work like the dickens, However did I plagiarize since she did the work and gave me permission to use her work as my own. It’s not plagiarism if the original creator grants you the rights. _Cheating_, on the other hand… ---
**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, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/68 "2019-11-20T23:39:17Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > Can’t think of any. The closest I can come up with is a piece of music I wrote that, years later, I decided had been heavily influenced in its chord-change pattern by a piece of contemporary pop I’d grown up hearing. But I’d at least done different things with the rhythm. Oh! I just remembered something similar I did that might be considered plagiarism. I was in a play for my community theatre and my character needed a song to sing, so I came up with a melody for him and got the Musical Director to write it up and I wrote the lyrics. About a year later I was watching _Bugsy Malone_ on TV and I realised I lifted the melody wholesale from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBdat4QeEr8). D’oh! ---
**Author:** ![StGermain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stgermain/32/2868_2.png) [@StGermain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StGermain)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/69 "2019-11-21T00:19:08Z")
> [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > But what if I had the screenwriter for _Finding Forrester_ come on and make a heartfelt post, only to reveal that I, not he, was the author of that post? Would you STILL accuse me of lifting significant elements of my earlier post from _Finding Forrester_, without appropriate attribution? Only if I get to see F. Murray Abraham grovel. StG ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/70 "2019-11-21T01:16:59Z")
As a freshman in high school, I had to write a short story for English class. I went in intending to only use it as inspiration, but I ended up writing Patrick McManus’s “The Mountain Car” from memory. I also had procrastinated, so I ran out of time to change it. I was found out and confessed, but I don’t remember being on much trouble. For non-fiction essays, I never felt a need to. It’s easy to cite sources and paraphrase while doing so. In college, I rewrote my own screenplay from script writing class as a short story for storytelling class. Changing the format took more work than I anticipated, and I changed the ending which I wasn’t satisfied with anyway. ---
**Author:** ![MacSpon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@MacSpon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacSpon)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/71 "2019-11-21T02:22:31Z")
I had to write an analysis of a piece of text. In the middle of the rest of whatever I wrote (it was a long time ago), I noted that the author “seemed to counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor.” The marker gave that bit a big tick. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/72 "2019-11-21T02:24:12Z")
Depends on your definition of plagiarism. I read a story used as the intro of an article, and then rewrote that same story as the intro in my paper. I did reference it, but it was written in a way that it could have been seen as the fact being referenced, not the story. I then later rewrote that same paper into a speech for a different class. Again, different words, changed for a different audience, but still the same thing. At the time, I saw absolutely nothing wrong with it, but some people have made it sound like you can plagiarize yourself. I never just copied something verbatim, though. It wasn’t just about honesty, but just about quality–I’ve never seen a copy-paste paper that was remotely decent. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/73 "2019-11-21T02:25:38Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > It’s not plagiarism if the original creator grants you the rights. > > _Cheating_, on the other hand… Disagree. It’s plagiarism if you don’t announce the source. What it isn’t is a copyright violation, but that’s a separate thing. You can also make a copyvio that isn’t plagiarism, if you credit the author. I’ve had to remove such from Wikipedia before. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/74 "2019-11-21T04:15:16Z")
> [@StGermain](#): > > Only if I get to see F. Murray Abraham grovel. > > StG Alright, then. \*[I personally shot this footage, and posted it online](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6y4B_BFrJ4). It is my own, original work, and totally not someone else’s. It just so happens F. Murray Abraham is a friend of mine. \*That’s a YouTube link, and the content ought to be obvious to anyone who has been following this back and forth and is familiar with the… “original work” in question. ---
**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/75 "2019-11-21T07:41:08Z")
Just to clarify my previous post. I doubt people on this board would frankly admit having plagiarized if this might cause them legal problems. On the other hand, the industry of writing papers on demand is so prosperous that everywhere you go you can bump into a (quasi)ghostwriter. I am baffled at the authorities’ impotence when faced with the booming business of academic ghostwriting. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/76 "2019-11-21T10:45:19Z")
> [@Zyada](#): > > So I copied word for word an encyclopedia entry about a mathematician. The assignment passed, and as far as I was concerned, I had met the spirit of the assignment (find out about a person who did math), even if I hadn’t met the letter of the assignment. When my dad was studying Engineering in the 1940s, one of his professors was dissatisfied with some of his work. Specifically, that he should be copying someone so that he got it right. Of course, that is somewhat in the spirit of Engineering anyway. I remember talking to a well-known engineer from one of the major electronics chip companies, who had seen some of the circuits from his own application notes reproduced by competitors. He said he might perhaps have felt angry about it if the ideas had been originally his… Myself, I straight out copied some stuff at university when I realized that (in that subject) they didn’t care, weren’t going to teach me anything, had lied to me in the first place, and were just wasting my time. Actually, as a sometime teacher, I know that copying material out is a teaching and learning process. If it’s done appropriately, under direction, the students are not put into the position of still being at that stage during the assessment process. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/77 "2019-11-21T10:48:27Z")
> [@PlaceboTarget](#): > > Just to clarify my previous post. I doubt people on this board would frankly admit having plagiarized if this might cause them legal problems. On the other hand, the industry of writing papers on demand is so prosperous that everywhere you go you can bump into a (quasi)ghostwriter. I am baffled at the authorities’ impotence when faced with the booming business of academic ghostwriting. And it’s been around for a while. I bumped into one in the university library around 1979. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2019, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/78 "2019-11-22T00:32:44Z")
When I was in 8th grade we had an assignment in my gifted and talented class to write a scenario about there being an organization that governed science world wide, our scenarios would then be sent out to some people for review and critique. I viewed this assignment as akin to writing a short story and did something about the scientist organization being too bureaucratic to listen to some important scientists with the end result of the end of the world, with only the two scientists as survivors who reveal their names as Adam and Eve. The review I got back was absolutely furious, even now I wince at how caustic it was. But as a result I learned that plagiarism was a thing, and that I probably shouldn’t use a story my babysitter once told me as a basis for original work. ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2019, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/79 "2019-11-22T03:08:34Z")
I have never plagiarized, but I won’t claim that it was out of some sense of virtue. I am possibly a bit–or quite a bit–conceited about my own command of language, and I always have been. I would never have been satisfied with using someone else’s words, given how compulsively I edit my own. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2019, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668/80 "2019-11-22T17:47:21Z")
> [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](#): > > You can’t plagiarize yourself! What you are doing may not be ethical in a given situation, but it’s not plagiarism. > > If you sold the rights to one of your creations, and then created it, or essentially it, again, you might be guilty of some kind of rights violation. But it’s not plagiarism. Although, considering how prevalent the use of this term is on the board populated by the smartest folks in the world, I guess that meaning could change. But at this point, 11/20/19, I don’t think it has. It’s a real term that gets used to describe a real practice that real people have a problem with. You may not like how English works, but too bad. > **[Plagiarism | Self-plagiarism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism#Self-plagiarism)** > > The reuse of significant, identical, or nearly identical portions of one's own work without acknowledging that one is doing so or citing the original work is sometimes described as "self-plagiarism"; the term "recycling fraud" has also been used to describe this practice. Articles of this nature are often referred to as duplicate or multiple publication. In addition there can be a copyright issue if copyright of the prior work has been transferred to another entity. Self-plagiarism is consid In a... FWIW you’re not the only one who takes issue with it [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-plagiarize-anything/843668.md?page=5)