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There's a Word for That

PLAGIARIZE (verb): To take ideas, writings, etc., from another and pass them off as your own
Bob Chapman and I have published a variety of articles here and in the MFRtech eJournal.

Recently, through pure accident, we discovered another B2B blog had poached large chunks of content from our article, Is Price Pressure Affecting Your Bottom Line? They did this without permission and without citing the source.

English, remarkable language that it is, has a word for this practice. It's called plagiarism.

Plagiarism is a simple problem to prevent. All you have to do is ask permission from the author or publication to use their material, or cite the source (article, book, blog, etc.) of the content you're using.

There are many ways in print and online to provide citations for practical content. On this site and in work produced for clients, I typically use one of five fast methods.

When you include a citation, it signals three things:
  • Your work is based on someone else's writing or ideas
  • You know it
  • You behave with integrity

Which brings me back to our example. Through a cordial email exchange, the blog owner learned  the information he was posting as original content had been poached from our article.

He apologized, immediately added appropriate credits and included some relevant links. Problem solved.
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