I noticed that several already-existing poems used the same highly specific puns and phrases that I used. Is this unintentional plagiarism on my part?
A bit of context:
Exhibit A) I wrote a poem that had the line "crystalline crystal lines."
I googled this phrase, just to see if it was out there, and I saw that it was. I had never read the poem in question, but I still felt like I was in dangerous plagiarism territory, so I ended up using another phrase instead in my poem.
B) I wrote a poem in which I had the line "synonym synonym synonym synonym." I googled this phrase, and I saw that it was used several times (in a non-poetic genre, in a scholarly argument and a news article).
I also used the phrase "reading the Cliff's Notes of Hamlet" and I saw that someone in an online discussion board used this phrase. I used the phrase "sword-wielding protectors" and this appeared in several hits of fantasy novels and forums. Same with the phrase "kaleidoscope galaxies," and "children of the atom," which is the name of several comic book series. In a poem I mention the movie finding Nemo, and say that "he's a fish who's been separated from his father." I found this quote in a scholarly article about the film. In all these cases, I hadn't read these sources at all, or even heard of them. In all of these cases, I have felt uncomfortably close to plagiarism, and have altered my poems.
What do you all think?
Am I being oversensitive and paranoid because I'm not the first one to come up with a certain phrase? Or am I doing the right thing?
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2 answers
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How to plagiarize:
Deliberately steal someone's work. This is always ethically wrong and usually illegal too. Students who do this get expelled or otherwise punished. Authors who do this get legal repercussions and shunned. All deserved. This is not even close to what you are doing.
Accidentally steal someone's work. Sometimes when you get an idea and you don't know where you came up with it, it turns out someone else's work was in your brain and it filtered in. This is what you're worried you might be doing and, yes, looking up the phrases is a really good idea. But if you find similar (or even exact) short phrases only in places you're not already familiar with, it's a good sign that you're not stealing by accident. (If you are familiar with the other works you probably didn't steal but accident either, context matters.)
Screw up during your learning process. Students sometimes don't understand how to quote or cite things properly. They aren't claiming they wrote XYZ but they write their paper or work in a way that's misleading the reader. As long as nothing gets officially published, this is the sort of thing a good teacher will catch and correct.
You are right to be cautious and to research. All of us should do that. But none of your examples are plagiarism. Or even borderline. So keep checking, but consider that you've done your due diligence and go write!
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You're being overly sensitive. Any combination of two words, no matter how original, could be already used elsewhere. That's not plagiarism, that's statistics.
The only slightly worrying case is your exhibit A, since it's the most unusual sentence of the ones you cited. But then again, I wouldn't fret about it. They are just three words in a line, even if they are somewhat peculiar, they are three.
Exhibit B is not even an exhibit: you just used a rhetorical device of repetition over the word "synonym". It's not plagiarism, its just chance.
Consider the famous Macbeth verse:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
By your standards, you wouldn't be able to use combinations as:
- Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow (again, a repetition)
- petty pace
- recorded time
- lighted fools
- dusty deaths
- brief candle
If this seems unreasonable to you, it's because it is. Plagiarism is, most of the time, a deliberate decision; being inspired by others is another thing entirely, and using expressions already used elsewhere is almost unavoidable.
I won't open here the whole debate of originality vs imitation, but that's another thing to consider, and very relevant to the creative process. To wrap it up, while we may follow the idea of being "original" and do things nobody has done before, as humans a lot of our mindframe (and artistic sense) comes from consuming and imitating the works of others. And that, if you want my two cents on the matter, is perfectly fine.
Going back to your question: rein in your inner editor, because it's rampaging and censoring your own work.
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