Could YOU Be Accidentally Plagiarising Other Bloggers? - DailyBlogTips |
| Could YOU Be Accidentally Plagiarising Other Bloggers? Posted: 11 Mar 2014 06:00 AM PDT One morning, I read a guest post on a major blog on a topic that I specialise in. All the sections in the post sounded like points I’d make. At first I brushed that off. But then something about the wording made me pause. This post seemed a little too familiar. A quick Google later, and I'd found a post I wrote two years before: a guest post for a different blog. My structure and all my ideas had been used, intact. Unusual words and phrases – like "mediocre" – were used in both posts. Every one of my sentences had been reworded (in many cases badly) but it was still stolen. Plagiarism doesn't just mean passing off someone's words as your own. It includes stealing their ideas. Of course, you'd never take someone else's blog post and publish it as your own. (And if your posts get stolen, here's how to deal with it.) There often aren't many brand new ideas in a particular niche – just old ones expressed in fresh ways. But where do you draw the line between "research" and "theft"? What counts as plagiarism and how can you avoid it? "Spinning" a Post is Still PlagiarismThe rather ironic thing about this guest post is that the author was promoting a site that sells anti-plagiarism software! I suppose my post passed their tests – and I don't think anyone could have found the original by a Google search except for me, the original author. But if you take someone's blog post and rewrite it all in your own words, that's still plagiarism. After all, you're stealing the hard work that they put into research and planning it, and structuring it carefully. This doesn't mean you can't use other people's posts for research. But you should never rely on just one source. It makes it too easy to plagiarise (even without really meaning to). Plus, using multiple sources means your post is more likely to contain solid, agreed-on ideas. Quoting from Other AuthorsIf you want to use someone's exact words in your own post, you can … but you need to put them in quotation marks or in <blockquotes> formatting. You should always give the name of the person who wrote (or spoke) those words, and if they're from a blog post, it's good practice to link to it. If you're quoting from a blog post or web page, it’s good practice to link to it. Tip: Where bloggers (and other writers) find themselves accidentally plagiarising, it’s usually because they’ve copied chunks of posts while researching into their notes, without necessarily including the author’s name. It’s all too easy to come back to these months later and think that they’re your own words. Using a Post as the Basis for Your OwnWhat if you read a post that’s so good, you want to present the material in it to your blog readers? You don’t just want to use a short quote from it – you want to give them the whole post, or at least a substantial amount of it. The best way to do that is to write a fresh post of your own, introducing the post, then quoting from and linking to it. Daniel does this frequently here on DailyBlogTips – here are a couple of examples: Careful with Guest Blogging for SEO Purposes Only 100 Great Business Ideas for 2014 Ultimately, make sure that everything you write is:
If you’ve got a question about plagiarism, just pop a comment below.
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| One Crucial Thing You MUST Avoid When Choosing a Free WordPress Theme Posted: 10 Mar 2014 07:01 AM PDT Let's say you're looking for a fresh new look for your blog … but your budget is non-existent. What do you do? Perhaps you head to Google and type in: "free wordpress themes" There are a huge number of sites offering these – you might be a bit dazzled by the range. But you find a theme you like, download and install it, and you're happy. Except there's a catch. That theme includes malicious code, or an encrypted link back to the creator's site. Using it for your blog could open you up to serious problems – like malware infecting your site, or Google penalising you. (Even if the theme creator had good intentions, it may have been tampered with by a hacker before being released onto the web.) Get a Safe, Free WordPress ThemeThankfully, there's a really simple solution. Always choose themes through the WordPress.org site. They have a free theme directory here. You can also find these themes through your blog's dashboard, under Appearance à Themes à Add New. If you find a free theme somewhere else that you like, check whether it's available on the WordPress.org site. If it isn't, avoid it. Further ReadingIf you want to know more about this, check out: The Best and Safest Places for WordPress Themes – Free and Premium, Will Ransz, Wilwebs.com This post explains the difference between free, sponsored and premium themes, and explains how to use the WordPress.org database of themes. Anatomy of a Theme Malware, Otto, Otto on WordPress This is an illuminating and disturbing post breaking down the malware in a legitimate theme that was copied and modified by spammers. You don't need to understand the techy stuff to get an idea of how cunning and malicious these spammers can be. Free WordPress Themes: The Ultimate Guide, Raelene Wilson, wpmudev This post explains the ins and outs of free themes. It's a little biased towards premium themes (wpmudev sell themes, among other things) but it's an in-depth guide with links to plenty of free themes, and it explains how to check a theme for malicious code.
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