The Gut-Punch Of Plagiarism
[Editor’s Note: Sorry for the late notice, but here’s a chance TODAY at 1pm eastern to hear Roger in action on Tony Martignetti’s Nonprofit Radio. Listen live. Or listen to the archived version at your leisure.]
We at The Agitator are fans of Lisa Sargent. She’s a solid fundraising professional who freely shares her excellent communications advice with our entire community through her website and monthly e-newsletter on donor loyalty.
That said, she earns — and we stress ‘earns’ — her living as a copywriter, delivering original and effective prose.
But along comes a parasite who plagiarises her work … an abuse to her creativity and to the rights of her client, who rightfully would have expected to exclusively reap the benefits of the work they commissioned from her.
[And then there’s the ‘mark’ — the second client/recipient/victim, who probably thought they were paying for originality and uniqueness of message!]
We’re happy to give Lisa The Agitator podium today to vent.
Lisa, we feel your pain.
Roger and Tom
The Gut-Punch of Plagiarism, and Everything After
By Lisa Sargent
Copywriter and donor communications specialist
Picture yourself plagiarized.
You begin to read the words on the screen … words of another writer paraded on cyberspace from an all-too-recent appeal. Words like your own.
You shake it off.
It couldn’t be. Could it?
Then you reach the paragraph on the middle of side one.
Your stomach lurches. This charity’s cause is different – so the words are subtly shifted. But there it is.
Same transition. Same progression. Same number of sentences. Eerily similar cadence. That choppy mid-para rhetorical question? It was there too.
This week plagiarism happened to me.
So striking was the similarity I went immediately to the letter I’d written one year earlier. It felt like my child had gone missing in a department store, only to have someone try and walk her out the door – passed off as another’s one, true love – wearing new clothes.
I panicked.
Then (for at least two hours) I pontificated. The swine! The scum! Lowest of the low!
Imitation is a form of flattery? My pissed-off patootie it is! At least not when a word ravaging happens to you.
Then I did this…
I investigated as far as I could. Next, barring direct proof, I decided to learn about plagiarism and share it with you… faithful, fabulous readers of The Agitator.
Turns out, I’m not wrong. But it’s a big old gray area. And maybe it should be.
At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s website, plagiarism is defined as “the deliberate or reckless representation of another’s words thoughts, or ideas as one’s own without attribution….”
They also qualify it eloquently with this (same link), which I love – and which speaks loud and clear to a practice you should be doing, i.e. building a swipe file: “All knowledge is built from previous knowledge. As we read, study, perform experiments, and gather perspectives, we are drawing on other people’s ideas. Building on their ideas and experiences, we create our own.”
Plagiarism.org, too, has a terrific piece on plagiarism, where they rank the ten most common in order of severity of intent.
If you disseminate or produce copy it’s worth reading. I did, and learned that I’d probably fallen victim to what they rank as level five plagiarism, or Recycling: borrowing “generously from the writer’s previous work without citation.”
I suspect it’s worse if you’re charging clients for original stuff.
But let’s face it.
Everyone at some point has cringed to see they’ve used phrasing that’s heartstoppingly like someone else’s in a blog post or twitter, etc.
Social media is a 24/7 lightning round of chicken and the egg.
Plus, in an industry that stands on the shoulders of smart, creative swiping, what the hell are we copywriters and designers supposed to do if practically everything is plagiarism?
My God, can you imagine?
No Christmas gift catalogs. No calendar mailings. No child sponsorships.
Doubtless someone would try, on a Taylor-Swift-like spree, to trademark phrases like “Thanks to you,” or “Please help” or (warning Roger!) “retention fundraising.”
In the end, donors and great causes would suffer.
And in the end, I don’t have (nor do I care to have) the market cornered on copywriting. Not by a mile.
I am however, watching.
Because as the impeccably ethical Tom Ahern (one of my all-time heroes and iconic advice-givers) told me:
“Colleagues are supposed to be the white hats. I totally agree with every other business ‘philosopher’ since the dawn of commerce who said: trust is all we have.”
Trust is all we have.
For those of us who make a living off the creative spark inside our heads…
For those of us who’ve dedicated years, nay, decades to this noble craft…
For those of us who’ve labored long and hard to write the symphony of goodwill that we conduct daily with pencil, paper and keyboard…
Truer words were never spoken.
Be good out there, people. Be good. In my heart of hearts I know that most of you will.
Trust is all we have.
7 responses to “The Gut-Punch Of Plagiarism”
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Dear Lisa
I too feel your pain. Over the years I’ve viewed my words and thoughts being recycled with a mixture of pride and disquiet. It’s so common it’s inevitable, so best maybe to lie back and enjoy it. And I plagiarise too – creatively and honourably I hope – as I openly quote others not just because I want to share and spread their wisdom but also, I want to seem more clever and well-informed, mixing with the Gods.
As you say this is clearly a grey area and perhaps we should define better than we do where plagiarism is allowed and even encouraged and where it is very definitely not. From you I learned the concept of a swipe file (though I’d kept one close by for years and was building another with sofii.org). Your thank-you letter clinics are among the most visited exhibits on SOFII and readers daily borrow your brilliant words, phrases and even whole letters, time and again. There’s obviously a fine line to be walked here. Plagiarism is flattery. Why trouble to think of your own big idea if you can borrow and embellish someone else’s? Recycled ideas are none the less effective for being second hand. But un-attributed plagiarism, or ‘passing off’ is of course theft, and the province of the lowest of the low. Worse still is to repackage someone else’s work as your own and in so doing, dilute or diminish its original form or impact.
Thanks for raising an important issue (and for being the original, inimitable, un-copyable you).
Ken
Thanks Lisa – I know how you feel. I wouldn’t mind so much if the people lifting my stuff did it well. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve sat on a tube train and seen one of my lines lifted, totally out of context, and slapped on an ad. Or an idea for one campaign being mangled into a totally inappropriate one.
But that’s just the perfectionist (or more probably the egoist!) in me. I’m not sure I’m entitled to use the word ‘my’ when talking about anything I’ve come up with. Any success I’ve had has always been the result of my standing on the shoulders of giants (or at least getting a piggy back).
Picasso said good artists borrow, great artists steal. But lazy, overpaid, under qualified copywriters just plagerise.
Ha! Love that Charlie. ‘I wouldn’t mind so much if the people lifting my stuff…’ And thanks to you, Ken, always — and to Roger and Tom for the podium.
Let me be clear. I am A-OK with swiping. Personally, Ken, I hope people are swiping the hell out of my thank-you clinic stuff on SOFII: if donors are thanked better as a result, that’s a good thing.
In fact I can think of the idea for at least one control package that was directly inspired by a SOFII exhibit. Is it identical to its progenitor? No.
I understand some agencies adapt the exact same pack for different branches of a big charity — and even different charities separated by many miles. Things like Grateful Pt programs here in the U.S. are ubiquitous at hospitals. I know once ‘my’ copy has gone to a client, it ceases, really, to be mine at all.
Will people lift headlines? Of course. Entire books have been written around it. It’s how we learn! Should things like transitions be trademarked? Oh for Pete’s sake, no: that’s like trying to trademark ‘hope’ or ‘love.’ I don’t want to live in that world… which is why the action I chose was to write this article and open a forum around it.
All I’m saying is, if you’re a generally ethical person and you get a squirmy feeling when you’re adapting someone else’s stuff, it’s probably a good sign that a line (however thin) has been crossed and you need to apply more of your own blood, sweat, and tears.
An important post, Lisa. One that needed to be said.
I actually blogged on the topic five years ago: http://www.pamelagrow.com/845/be-a-first-rate-version-of-yourself/ And I concur with everything Ken has said.
The funny thing is, when folks have written and ASKED to borrow a phrase (or even an entire email), I usually say yes. It’s when people ‘borrow’ my email copy verbatim without bothering to check with me that I get peeved.
Like Ken said, this is a grey area. And an issue that will probably become more and more frequent. I like the way you put it: if you “get a squirmy feeling when you’re adapting someone else’s stuff, it’s probably a good sign that a line (however thin) has been crossed and you need to apply more of your own blood, sweat, and tears.” Yup.
Lisa, I’m so glad you shared this. It can be tricky – but as you say, your gut often guides you before your brain does.
I struggle with giving what I feel is adequate thanks to the people who really shape my thinking on fundraising daily: Tom and Roger here, Jeff Brooks, Tom Ahern, Pam Grow, and of course, you (and so many more… oh dear, now I’ll be leaving out others). My blog pretty much ought to read “thank you, and you and you” – all hyperlinked to the above.
I hate the thought that someone would violate you like that. (It makes me want to come running in like Robin to back up Batman.) And I wonder if it was a cynical work-saving decision or something less intentional?
The swipe file… Great resources… Trademarking…
So the Free Download Library on my website is intended as a swipe file. I tell people to use and edit. Like my policies and job descriptions, etc.
I ask people to credit me (or say inspired by me) if it makes sense. I smile proudly when I see people actually copying some of my policies onto their letterhead and personalize them. Yippee. That’s what I wanted.
But if someone wants to use my work in an article or book or something…. I’d like credit. And if someone is reflecting on my thinking and commentary – for example “philanthropy’s moral dilemma” – I’d like a comment about me.
So it’s a judgment call on some level. And a self-recognition. And reaching out and asking.
And it certainly is NOT trademarking statements like “donor-centered fundraising” or “keep your donors” or “love thy reader” or “retention fundraising.’ Come on people! Tom and I wrote a book called “Keep Your Donors.” A consultant actually suggested to me that we should trademark that phrase. WHAT?! Ken Burnett didn’t trademark the phrase “relationship fundraising” – and he may be the first user. Ted Hart didn’t trademark “e-philanthropy” and he may have been the first user. Come on people…..
Thanks Lisa and T.B. and R.C.
I’ve seen our stuff ‘borrowed’ quite a lot, and by and large I’m fairly relaxed about it. The university fundraisers’ association, CASE (the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education) is often known amongst us as Copy And Steal Everything.
But I do feel terribly sorry for people who copy wholesale, because I think they are missing out on the chance to have created something that was authentically for their audience, and about their charity. And that is such an inestimable loss.