I am writing a book on my beliefs about a particular characteristic of human nature with material I believe to be new and unique to anything ever spoken about by other authors. My question is if I happen to touch upon something that someone else spoke about before myself in my writing (unbeknownst to me) would using their idea constitute plagariasm? If I am responsible how am I suppose to search millions of volumes or text to successfully cite those ideas? In summation am I responsible for others ideas if I am unbeknowst to them or it is extremely impractical to go about discovering them? Is there a process that authors go through to screen their ideas to see if they owe credit to a previous author? Please respond with thorough and detailed answers..
2007-06-03 16:48:15 · 2 answers · asked by dellptn 2 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Books & Authors
There is an awesome site that is free to use to make a works cited page. You just choose the style and enter in all the information and it creates a reference in the correct form. They offer it free so people can give credit where credit is due. It saved my butt in English Comp last semester. Enjoy!
www.citationmachine.net
2007-06-03 16:58:35 · answer #1 · answered by Jennifer 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
It would be plagiarism if you wrote these ideas down word for word, letter by letter, that the other person wrote/spoke first. I believe it is Bartlett's Book of Famous Quotations that would lead you quickest to finding out who had these thoughts before you. If the other person is still living (or any of his/her family), you would also be violating copyright laws if the thoughts were written down/published previously. You can paraphrase these ideas (in other words, add some of your words among the other's ideas) without too many problems. I know that in doing research papers, you have to cite your sources in footnotes and/or bibliography at the end of the paper.
2007-06-04 00:00:37 · answer #2 · answered by jan51601 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋