Plagiarism in Writing - An Informative Post

Hi y'all! So with the recent uptick in writing on AJA, I thought I'd make a post about one major thing to avoid when writing a story. Though I haven't seen too much plagiarism on here, I think it's a subject still worth discussing. So let's get into it!

What is Plagiarism?

According to Google, plagiarism is "the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and ing them off as one's own." Now this may sound to you like art theft, and plagiarism in writing is very similar -- it can consist of anything from stealing a little-known fact to copying someone's writing word-for-word. Plagiarism can come in many other forms as well, such as using someone's direct idea without their permission.

Why is it Bad?

In the US and many other countries, plagiarism is illegal and can lead to serious repercussions. For example, plagiarization on a school paper can, in some cases, lead to the plagiarizer being expelled from college. Overall, plagiarizing when it comes to fictional stories can just make the original author feel discouraged and cheated, and copying should just never be done in any form of media.

How to Avoid Plagiarism

If you're going to copy someone word-for-word, please use quotations and give them credit either before or after your quote. An example of this was added earlier in this post:

According to Google, plagiarism is "the practice of taking someone else's words or ideas and ing them off as one's own."

Google was credited for the definition in the beginning of the sentence, and the words I borrowed from Google were included in quotations to show they aren't mine.

If you're not copying directly and are instead referencing ideas from another piece of media, please include a phrase somewhere that says "This writing is inspired by _____." But if you're largely referencing another writing piece on this Amino, please reach out to the author first and make sure it's alright with them. There's nothing worse for an author to see someone using their same ideas without asking first. And in the case that the author denies you permission to use their idea, you can always change it up to create something new!

Unintentional Plagiarism

Sometimes people can write stories that they don't even realize contain similar ideas to other stories. If you notice that someone else's story is similar to yours, please respectfully talk to the person about it first, since it's possible that they haven't read your story and didn't even know that what they were writing about had already been done before. Please be civil with them and try to reach a compromise that pleases both of you, and bring in a staff member if things get difficult.

However, a word of advice: if you become overly concerned that *everyone* is copying your stories, you may want to take a step back and reevaluate the situation. If you're constantly looking for places where you've been copied, you're going to find them, and it'll just make you more paranoid. Before you go after someone for copying your story, ask yourself this: is the idea really that uncommon in general, and is it actually worth keeping the idea to yourself?

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I hope you all learned something from this post! Please keep in mind that this is not aimed at anyone in particular, and I just wanted to draw attention to this issue. Thanks for reading!

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(Aesthetic images are not mine, but the GIF was made by me.)