Plagiarism and speechwriting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary says that to plagiarize is:

 

“to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own; use (another’s production) without crediting the source.”

 

An article by Lindsay Kramer at Grammarly on June 2, 2022 titled 7 Common Types of Plagiarism, With Examples says those types are: accidental, complete, direct, paraphrasing, patchwork, self, and source-based.

 

There is a brief, useful article by Jesse Scinto on pages 14 and 15 of the March 2017 Toastmaster Magazine titled What is Plagiarism and How Can You Avoid It?

 

Some university libraries have guides for their courses on public speaking including plagiarism. For example, there is one by Amy Windham of Pepperdine University which is a Learning and Research Guide – COM 180 Public speaking & Rhetorical Analysis titled What is Plagiarism? And at the University of Southern California there is a Research Guide – Com 204 Public Speaking:Plagiarism. A more detailed guide is a six-page pdf from University of Missouri – St. Louis titled Avoiding Plagiarism. Back on February 24, 2015 I blogged about How to do a better job of speech research than the average Toastmaster (by using your friendly local and state university libraries).

 

There also is another article by Dane Cobain at Speakerhub on August 30, 2022 titled How Public Speakers Can Avoid Plagiarism with the following paragraph titles:

 

Don’t plagiarize

Use a plagiarism checker

Give credit where credit is due

Create original ideas

Run your idea past someone

Google your topics

Ask for permission

Use exact match searches

Plan what you’re going to say

Ask for feedback

 

And the 2018 open-source textbook by Lori and Mark Halverson-Wente titled The Public Speaking Resource Project has Chapter 26 about Avoiding Plagiarism.

 

For an excellent example of what to avoid, look at yet another article from Jonathan Bailey at Plagiarism Today on July 19, 2016 titled The Melania Trump Plagiarism Scandal. Her Republican National Convention speech copied one by Michelle Obama.

 

The cartoon burglar was adapted from OpenClipArt.