Is this plagiarism?

[Legolas]

At a university level, plagiarism is very, very much frowned upon. Articles are usually full of reference marks and accompanied by a list of sources often numbering many hundreds all to avoid trouble (and help researchers find other papers of interest). If you're accused of plagiarism in those circles it can literally ruin your standing and career, so her fame or infamy won't have done much for her.

[Bungleau]

Originally posted by Larry_OHF: There was a University girl up North (Harvard??) that wrote a book and it was highly sought after and praised by critics until somebody noted that a sentence she used in it was a bastardization of a sentence from another work. In her version, she switched the word order in a list around, and added one of her own words. This was enough to get her dropped from her publisher, expelled from the university and all that followed.

The actual incident, cited in Wikipedia:

Kaavya Viswanathan, a Harvard University student and novelist, whose first novel was How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life (2006), is reported to contain plagiarized passages from at least five other novels. Her publisher, Little, Brown and Co. subsequently withdrew all editions of the book and rescinded her publishing deal.

It was more than just a little word order rearranging, apparently.

Also this year, the CEO of Raytheon got busted as well:

William H. Swanson, CEO, of Raytheon, admitted to plagiarism in claiming authorship for his booklet, "Swanson's Unwritten Rules of Management," after being exposed by The New York Times.[16] On May 2, 2006, Raytheon withdrew distribution of the book.

I have a copy of his unwritten rules... they were apparently written, and by someone else...

[Kakero]

Originally posted by Legolas: At a university level, plagiarism is very, very much frowned upon. Articles are usually full of reference marks and accompanied by a list of sources often numbering many hundreds all to avoid trouble (and help researchers find other papers of interest). If you're accused of plagiarism in those circles it can literally ruin your standing and career, so her fame or infamy won't have done much for her.

Just a question, should I put reference marks and list of sources at the beginning of the story (Before chapter 1/introduction) or until the end of the story ( ie the entire story has finished )?

I kinda prefer putting them at the end of the story.

[Callum]

I've never seen a fiction novel with references. If you are only taking something like the example above, I'm sure that'll be fine. Life is like a box of chocolate probably wasn't a Forrest Gump original anyway.

If you are taking enough to warrant a reference, you shouldn't take that much anyway.

But perhaps a note in the acknowledgements.

[Bungleau]

For a fiction story, I think an acknowledgement at the beginning is fine (Thanks to Forest Gump for some down-home inspiration). Footnotes in a work of fiction? The only times I've ever seen that were in fantasy works where the author was telling you in what other books certain pieces of history happened, and in a Louis L'Amour western or two when he wanted to show that he wove reality into his fiction.

[Legolas]

Exactly. And if you are going to intentionally borrow pieces from someone else the way to go about it is asking the original author or whomever holds the rigths if they'll allow it.

[ 07-27-2006, 02:07 AM: Message edited by: Legolas ]

[Kakero]

Yeah, I've been to fanfiction.net and I never seen any of the fiction there put references.

But I just want to be prepared just in case some nosey people want to cry thief, rape and murder.

[burnzey boi]

Sayings can't be plagiarism, can they? E.G : 'My throat is drier than a dead dingo's dongo', is off a movie but i have heard it before. I think plagiarism is only if you take a whole paragraph off of something and post it as your own.

[Bungleau]

Years ago, I sent a letter to Don Pendleton, author of the Executioner series. I asked him whether if I wrote a book similar to one of his (#2, Death Squad), it would be illegal for copyright infringement or whatever. I also commented on another book that I'd read that I thought was a copy of one of his.

He responded that as long as I used his as a structure and fleshed it out with my stuff, it was okay. Lifting whole passages and such was out of the question. And he knew the guy who I thought had copied his, and he was cool with it.

So... if you want to be careful, you could do something like this the first time you use a reference:

Billy Bob: "Man, my throat is drier than a dead dingo's dongo."

Sally Sue: "Wasn't that a line in a movie?"

Billy Bob: "Yeah, but it's still true."

[DrowArchmage]

I think i might have read a friends paper that had some plagerized ideas in it,like he mixed Romeo and Juliet with a DragonBallZ type deal. It was an interesting read though.