Copy Cat(ch)
Sidin Vadukut -
Thursday, June 05, 2008 1:07 PM
It's been two weeks or so since my last blog and I am entirely at fault...but not really. The IPL completely hogged my time. Around 4 PM everyday match fever overtook the newsroom, most notably from the corner which houses the desk of the right honourable Niranjan Rajadhyaksha, cricket scholar, opinion pages editor and coconut water addict sans compare.
But now that the tournament is complete and the Chennai Superkings (yay!) have lost to the Rajasthan Royals (boo!) life can get back to normal and I look forward to having meaningful conversations with the missus again.
Today we will deal with an issue that plagues most journalists and editors of newspapers: How do we convince the in-laws that we make enough money? (Answer: Drop names of people you have interviewed till they finally relent to your non-monetary greatness.)
No, I am talking about the evil of plagiarism: When writers shamelessly lift lines, paragraphs, entire sections and sometimes complete articles from other places and try to pass it off as their own. Not only must journalists not commit it (not that we do, wink wink) but also prevent our contributors and other colleagues from defiling our pages so.
But its also important in your company if you work in one of those content-centric outfits like consulting, research, analysis and so on where the client is paying through this teeth for your powerpoint presentations and neatly bound reports. Not to mention in academics.
So here are a few neat ways of checking up on content you handle to see if it's been a little too "inspired" (a la Opal Mehta) by someone else:
1. Google it: Yessir. Just copy a chunk of text from the piece and drop it in the Google search box. The search engine is remarkably good at throwing up similar if not, god forbid, identical text.
2. Copyscape it: Go to www.copyscape.com if you want to check if something on your blog or your corporate website (or any other website) has been plagiarised. Drop in the url you think has been ripped off in the search box and the site will immediately throw up all possible plagiarism possibilities.
3. For a really comprehensive check of word documents and websites go to www.plagiarismdetect.com. You do need to sign up, something I hate doing for short online activities, but the facility offered is pretty good. You can upload your documents, cut and paste text or even drop in a URL.
Between the three of those methods you should have zero trouble catching CTRL-C --> CTRL-V boffins in the office.
A word of warning though. Not all Plagiarism cases necessarily need to be bonafide -> http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/06/14/plagiarism/print.html
Ciao. I will now go get a haircut.