Alan Jacobs with an interesting note on plagiarism:

…see something in a digital book or article that they want to use, copy the relevant text, and then paste it into Word with the intention of editing it later to in some sense make it their own.

Alan’s note covers controversy in academic publishing and the plagiarism that could be caused by sloppy writing and the pressures of education. However, I spent the whole time thinking about blogging and linking posts. I don’t write many of what you would typically call a link post, but I do quote numerous people on my blog and often run through the thought process that Alan talks about.

I save loads of quotes for possible use later. They litter my notebook, my Apple notes and even the occasional sticky note on my desk. Little snippets of ideas or information I might need later to complete some work or give me a starting point for my ideas in a blog post. I always stay true to the original person, but I must admit there’s not a lot of work needed to change the wording and attempt to pass the work off as your own.

Which leads me to wonder where the point is that the copied words become your own? Is changing the phrasing slightly enough?

…if you quote too much, it might become obvious that there’s not a lot of you in your article. So you need to rework the quotations to make the extent of your debts less obvious.

We have all seen blog posts that are more quotes than content. Which is fine, to a point, and where the aim is to share the work of someone else to another audience. When there isn’t a lot added to the conversation outside of that, you do have to ask yourself, what’s the point — and Alan suggests this is where much plagiarism begins. The words are changed, or in some cases not changed enough, due to lack of extra content and not wanting to make it obvious.