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Can You Plagiarize Yourself?

Paul Lalley

This YouMoz entry was submitted by one of our community members. The author’s views are entirely their own (excluding an unlikely case of hypnosis) and may not reflect the views of Moz.

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Paul Lalley

Can You Plagiarize Yourself?

This YouMoz entry was submitted by one of our community members. The author’s views are entirely their own (excluding an unlikely case of hypnosis) and may not reflect the views of Moz.

I’m lucky, sort of.   

I write four blog posts a week for web design companies and a hosting company. No complaints here. However, because I’ve been undertaking these assignments for 18 months, that works out to over 200 articles on SEO/SEM topics.

At that rate, you have to slice the baloney pretty thin. So, a question (not an epiphany): Can you plagiarize yourself?

First, you can’t copyright an idea. An idea is just out there for easy pickins. However, if in February I write a piece on HTML tags and what they do, and then in July I write an article on the same topic, though with completely original copy, is there an ethical dilemma here?

The words are always fresh, but after a while, I find myself writing blog posts or articles that sound familiar. A quick check of my backed-up files reveals why. I wrote something like this a year ago for a different client! Ugh.

The question is this: at what point do I start plagiarizing myself? If I write two articles with the same POV but different words, is that plagiarism? Am I being fair to the second client who ends up with a recycled slant on the same idea?

The question doesn’t keep me up nights, and I’m still doing the weekly assignments so my conscience can’t be bothering me that much.

Still, I wonder. Thoughts from those in the know?

webwordslinger

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