A loot of the books I’ve written were aimed at absolute beginners, and my friends had fun telling me that I wrote them using copy and paste.
What are friends for, if they couldn’t make fun of you, eh?
Anyway, no, I have never used copy and paste. But I have rewritten things from time to time. More lately than earlier. But never copied. I would never recommend the use of copy and paste, when it comes to creating texts.
Today, somebody asked me if copy and paste were involved in my product “How to Get Fresh’n’Free Unique Content on your Blog“.
The clear answer is No. And I’ll tell you why not.
Copying is Stealing
One of the main reasons is that by copying somebody else’s work, you are in fact stealing it. It’s illegal and un-ethical.
Copying is to take Honour from Somebody Else
I was on a mailing list about how to lose weight. Somebody postet a poem on the list, and everybody wrote and praised her for her poem. Only problem – it wasn’t her poem, but a famous Danish poetrist, but she just signed it with her own name.
How could she enjoy the praisals knowing that she wasn’t the creator of the poem?
Inspiration is Okay
You can let yourself get inspired by other people’s texts. But never copy them. Oftentimes you might even make a better text than the original by structuring it differently, or just by using a better language.
Earlier, I would never even use this methode. Once I was asked to write an article for a Danish computer magazine, and they send me some articles to use as inspiration. I didn’t. I knew I could do better myself.
Today, I use articles as inspiration for my own from time to time. Especially, if it’s about a subject I don’t know that much about. What I do then is to read two or three articles about the subject, and then I write my own article based on the informations I found in the others.
It’s good to see an opinion on ‘copy and paste’ that I agree with. Too many people think it’s okay to just use the results of someone else’s time and effort without permission or acknowledgement.
I’d also shy away from just rewriting articles, particularly internet ones. Too often, the information is not accurate, and taking innacurate information and then changing it can add even more inaccuracies into the new article. Look for offline information, such as that from magazines or newspapers, as it’s often so more closely verified and more in-depth than the information that you’ll find on the Internet.
I’m glad you agree, and thank you for adding that important last part.
Reasently, I read a “5 tips for beginners to World of Warcraft”, and they contained pure nonsense. It’s very important to do more research that just what’s in a single article, maybe even off-line, if you don’t have the knowledge yourself.
As for magazines and newspapers as reliable source, well, neither in France, nor in Denmark, they can be considered reliable, I’m afraid. Research is a foreign word, many don’t even know. And many are not even able to read and understand things like a press release. Pity and shame.