When I went to school it was against the rules to cheat off of your neighbor’s paper. Not sure if that’s true today. After all, if you don’t copy off of someone else, you might hurt their feelings. It’s like telling them they’re not smart enough to copy. What if they are a different race or gender? You might be guilty of racism or sexism.
But hey, I’m old. What the hell do I know?
By the way, it’s okay for me to say I’m old, but if you say it, that would be ageism. Wait. What if you’re older than I am? Can an old guy be accused of ageism for calling an older guy old?
Okay, my head hurts. I’ll stop. Wait. Did I just hurt the feelings of migraine sufferers by saying my head hurts?
Where was I?
Ah yes, assuming that cheating (and plagiarism) are still verboten, I want to point out a loophole. A way you can use what other people write to create your own content.
Here’s the thing. It’s not plagiarism to copy someone else’s idea. So if one lawyer writes a blog post about a SCOTUS opinion and says he thinks it sucks eggs, and you agree with that, you can write your own post and say the very same thing.
Don’t use their words, just their ideas.
The same goes for the post’s title. You can’t copyright titles, so go ahead and use it if you can’t come up with your own.
Of course if you don’t agree with what the other writer said, you can say that instead. (Careful, though. You don’t want to hurt their feelings.)
So there you go. You can never say you don’t know what to write about. Look at what someone else wrote and cheat off of their paper.
