Professional writing never involves stealing, of any kind. In processing a piece of writing, always pay attention to the importance of reliable sources, citing those sources, and the effects of plagiarism. When the goal is to provide good content to readers, the outcome would not exist without any one of these three requirements.

As a journalist, the number one rule is to use trustworthy scholarly sources. A scholarly source is known primarily for academic research, often exhibiting the methods of and having the demeanor of a scholar. When deciding if a source is scholarly, keep in mind the authors are experts in the field and/or are individuals who have done the research in the field. Journals that have a scholarly status always cite their sources in either bibliographic or footnote format. Finally, the purpose of a scholarly article is to report the original research and experiments, all in an attempt to provide useful information to fellow scholars.

Equally essential is citing your source. Understand that it is necessary to both know how to cite a source properly and provide a works cited or bibliography at the end of the article. Providing citations gives your writing credibility; it gives the original author credit for supplying the content; and it gives your readers an optional outlet for further knowledge of the topic. Most importantly, citing sources prevents the writer from plagiarizing other authors.

Which brings me to plagiarism. Plagiarism is the worst offense in the academic world of content writing. As stated on Dictionary.com, plagiarism is, “the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work.”

Plagiarism can even occur when people aren’t trying to steal content. Typically what happens is the writer rewrites the original content thinking they haven’t plagiarized, but when they don’t give credit to the original writer, it becomes plagiarism. Another consequence arises when, “Some unscrupulous individuals in the blogsphere are only out to scrape your content for their own websites, ripping off your material and claiming it as their own.”(Blog Plagiarism Q & A, Stephen)

I have a quote that helps me remember the importance of following these three simple requirements to ensure credibility as a writer. As quoted by Lao Tzu, “Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy.”