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What Counts As Plagiarism in Freelance Writing?

plagiarism

It is not difficult to find out what plagiarism is and what meaning it has. In our lives, we encounter it very often, without even understanding or noticing it.

Imagine that you have been working on an important project for a long time, achieving its implementation and excellent results. But your friend, whom you have said everything about your idea, took it to the company where he or she works and said that it is his or her idea. When someone appropriates someone else’s work and passes it off as their own – it is plagiarism. Plagiarism is very widespread in music, literature, painting, freelance, web design, and many other areas. It is very crucial to understand the essence of plagiarism because the use of other people’s ideas is not only not beautiful but also can lead to litigation.

Here is another example from life. There are very expensive brands of clothing, shoes, perfumes that are not available to everyone because of the price. But there are their cheap analogs, which copy branded goods and products. All this, of course, is plagiarism.      

You can call something plagiarism:

  1. Taking someone else’s work entirely and publishing it under their own name.
  2. Copying a part or a fragment of someone else’s work, without indicating the author of the work.

As spoken by the Head of Marketing at an essay writing service, “The plagiarist has two muses: one is called ‘copy’, the other – ‘paste.’” Understanding what plagiarism is, you can avoid problems in the future, especially if you are a freelancer.

Plagiarism and no plagiarism – how to recognize it in freelance writing?

There’s a very thin line between plagiarism and non-plagiarism. If a freelance writer takes the idea of some author as a basis and writes/paints/composes his or her work, it is not plagiarism.

Also, if it turns out that a certain fragment of text completely coincided with someone else’s, it can be a simple coincidence. It can be terms, scientific definitions, historical data.

It is important to know: borrowing ideas is not considered plagiarism. Nevertheless, the best way to check freelancer`s text for plagiarism is to use specialized plagiarism checkers that are very important in today’s life.

Types of plagiarism: in text, music, painting, design

The types of plagiarism are very diverse. But all these species can first of all be divided into 2 large groups.

The first one is intentional plagiarism. Someone else’s work or passage is taken quite deliberately and deliberately appropriated. Usually, so do those who want to make a profit from it – to earn more money on someone else’s work.

The second type of plagiarism is unintentional plagiarism. It happens when two different people have created the same project, strategy, or design. Yes, such situations have a place in the world, it is not fantastic.

Plagiarism in music

Plagiarism in music is a kind of plagiarism that is usually done for selfish purposes. The objects of plagiarism can be song lyrics or melodies. Copying other people’s songs takes place all over the world. There are many examples when artists have stolen music or text from foreign singers and used it as their own. There have been cases when such artists have been sued for plagiarism.

It will take a lot of effort to prove your authorship and that your music was used without your knowledge. You’ll need an expert and professional expertise.

Plagiarism in painting

Plagiarism in painting is when the author’s painting is redrawn, copied, and passed off as somebody`s. If the author of the painting just took some idea or plot and transmitted it in the work with their vision, it is not plagiarism. This can be called borrowing. And since imitation and borrowing can not be considered plagiarism, many people openly use it.

In painting, it is very difficult to find a boundary that separates imitation and plagiarism. After all, there are a lot of copies of paintings. Paintings by famous artists Michelangelo, Velasquez, Rembrandt, and others are redrawn by young artists at all times. Therefore it is important to distinguish plagiarism in painting from imitation and copies.

Plagiarism in design

Plagiarism in design meets in ordinary life everywhere. This type of plagiarism includes copying of the interior design, packaging of goods, signs, logos, clothing, web-design of sites.

Design development is very complex, requires a lot of patience and creative inspiration. Most of the time, other people’s design ideas are borrowed for the sake of making a profit by some freelance designers. 

Plagiarism in the text

Plagiarism in the text is one of the most common types of plagiarism. First of all, a huge number of fiction, newspapers, magazines, advertising booklets are publishing. They often copy each other. Secondly, almost all printed works are published on the Internet and finding any information is very easy. Therefore, it is much easier to steal an idea, text, or a fragment from someone, especially if it is freely available, than to suffer and compose yourself.

A large proportion of plagiarism always has students` texts. Checking for plagiarism is a painful subject for all universities in the world. To at least somehow keep students under control, a whole system has been devised to check all the works of students for plagiarism.

Plagiarism in freelance writing – features and how to check

So, text plagiarism is copying a part, passage, or full text of someone else’s material in your work. If a freelance writer has in his or her writing a piece of text from some site or resource, this freelancer is engaged in real plagiarism. If the whole writing consists of borrowed ideas, the probability that this text will not pass a plagiarism checker is great.

Plagiarism testing awaits and is a great fear for most young freelancers. There are many plagiarism checkers for freelancers on the Internet, with their help anyone can check any text at any time. 

How can a freelance copywriter remove plagiarism from the text?

After checking the text for plagiarism, a natural question arises – how to remove plagiarism from the text. After all, if a freelancer finds that his or her work has a low percentage of uniqueness, it will not be accepted by the client as completed. Removing plagiarism from the text is a very important and responsible thing. So, how can one remove plagiarism from the text? 

Replacing words with synonyms

To remove plagiarism from the text, there is a great way to replace as many words in the text as possible with synonyms. This method is quite simple, although it takes time and perseverance. The freelance writers:

  1. Use dictionaries of synonyms, choosing them themself. 
  2. Use an online synonymize program. He or she loads text into it, and the program automatically changes words to appropriate synonyms. But, after using such a service writer needs to check text for the right word choice.

Using quotes

A big trick for those who want to reduce plagiarism in the text is to use quotes. As written above, quotes do not count as plagiarism, so any freelance writer can add certain fragments in quotation marks to the text and mention the author. But, if the author does not implement quotes into the text, plagiarism checkers like Copyleaks will consider these parts of the text as plagiarism.

Paraphrasing

To remove plagiarism, you can paraphrase the borrowed text. To do this, you need to read a short passage of borrowed information and try to retell it in your own words. This must be done in such a way that you will pick up new words and create your personal, unique content.

Final thoughts

We meet plagiarism very often in our everyday life. It’s everywhere: on the street, on the Internet, in the cinema, in the shop. It’s not going to disappear from our lives.

But, plagiarism in textual form is our primary concern. Unscrupulous copywriters use someone else’s thoughts in their works in the hope of deceiving the customer. High-quality and unique text is the main task of any freelance copywriter. If there is no unique text, there is no qualitatively executed task. The only way to protect against poor freelance writing is through the use of plagiarism checkers. By using specialized services, you can detect stolen text and ask a copywriter to rewrite it. Some freelancers are cunning and if you’re not tough with them, you will not get the results you are looking for.

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