What is Plagiarism?

It is Theft!
There is no better way to describe plagiarism as plain, common theft and fraud.

“Theft of what?”
To put it plain and simple as possible; Plagiarism is when you steal someone else’s work and claim for it to be your own. It can be ideas, writing, or any form of use of printed or published language use without giving credit to the original source.

This might be a very expansive explanation, yet, the bottom line of it all is very simple to understand. You only need to ask yourself one question: “How much of this work is my own”? If it is not your own work, well, then you stole it from someone and that is plagiarism.

“How can it be fraud?”

This clarifies the theft part, but what about the accusation of fraud? When you submit a plagiarized piece of work to a client you are actually placing him under the impression that it is your work! Work of which you are the original creator and on payment you are transferring the copyright to your client!

It is scandalous to see how many articles written for the web or content pages are duplicated content with only a few synonym changes or scrambling of words to get it Copyscape passed! Just before you smile when you get that confirmation message that no matches have been found for the text you pasted on Copyscape or any other plagiarism checker for that matter, just thing for a moment, you are gambling with your integrity and reputation as a writer here.

How Does Plagiarism Happen?

Although accidental plagiarism is possible, the two most common ways plagiarism are committed is by:

• Cutting and Pasting – Wether it is only a couple of words, paragraph, or believe it or not, a whole article and present it as your own work, you are committing plagiarism.

• Making use of others’ headings or titles – If you write an article on fruit and use the title “5 Most Healthy Fruit to Eat” and list 5 types of fruit and I go and write an article using your listed content with the same title it is regarded as plagiarism as well. Scrambling the content will not change anything. However if I list five different kinds of fruit than those you have mentioned in your article, it is not plagiarism.

Plagiarism is the ultimate crime a writer can commit. It is almost an unforgivable sin in the writing industry and as said before, it reflects severely on your integrity and honesty.

When one look at the two reasons for plagiarism given above, it becomes clear that those methods are used by lousy and lazy writers. The type of writers we need to get rid of and discard from the industry.

The Grief of Spelling & Grammar

"You don’t go to a bakery and tell the baker please make sure you have an oven to bake the bread or take your kids to school and ask the principal to please make sure there will be a teacher to present your kids with lessons! It is like sending a soldier to war and remind him to take his ammunition! Why on earth would you want to tell a writer then to take up his spelling and grammar tools to do his work?"

Amongst the most common mistakes writers make, you will mostly find that spelling and grammar are one of the first mentioned errors we are warned against and it happens that it is also one of the first prerequisites clients mention for their work. This is wrong. As a writer, spelling and grammar are your tools you use to do your work.

You don’t go to a bakery and tell the baker please make sure you have an oven to bake the bread or take your kids to school and ask the principal to please make sure there will be a teacher to present your kids with lessons! It is like sending a soldier to war and remind him to take his ammunition! Why on earth would you want to tell a writer then to take up his spelling and grammar tools to do his work?

The bottom line is, even if you are a second language writer, your spelling, grammar and sentence construction abilities, is not negotiable. If you do not possess those skills, you are not equipped to be a writer.

Language is the medium you use to “paint the picture” to your reader and therefore it needs to be perfect. Therefore, it is wrong to regard spelling and grammar as a writing mistake. Spelling and grammar “mistakes” in writing are like cheating on your spouse in your marriage or relationship. It is just not suppose to happen!

As mentioned before, when you present a piece of your writing work, it is important to remember that what you place in front of your reader is a representation of yourself. When a client hires you to write an article it is so easy to forget that your client actually hires you to represent his website with your article.

If you are not able to adhere to the ultimate fundamentals of writing – spelling and grammar – it is unlikely that you will be able to make the mark with the rest of your article.