<p>Why is it so rare for two people to independently write something that is so similar?</p>
<p>I guess it depends on what you define as “plagiarism.” How many words are exactly the same. I’m sure people compose similar thoughts and phrases all the time.</p>
<p>Depending on how you define “word” there are somewhere between a half million and a million words in the English language. Of course come words get used a lot more than others. But with that much variety to choose from, the chances of two people accidentally composing long strings of identical text are pretty low.</p>
<p>bovertine and coureur, your points are well-taken.</p>
<p>Yet, the thing is this: there are nearly 100 million books, millions of journal articles, and billions of webpages. At some point, won’t people start saying the same thing? There’s only so many ways to say something.</p>
<p>To me, it’s a wonder that coincidental plagiarism is so rare given all that has ever been written.</p>
<p>The same words in a sequence happens all the time; we just don’t call it plagiarism because it is not taking someone else’s words, it’s just the way things are described. For example, one journal I worked with had a program that flagged five words in a row that appeared somewhere else as possible plagiarism. But a lot of ridiculous things ended up flagged – like “the Constitution of the United States.”</p>
<p>“There’s only so many ways to say something.”</p>
<p>Depending on what the ‘something’ is. One sentence, one simple concept - maybe. But plagiarism among students often involves taking someone else’s idea and the compelling arguments behind it, and presenting it as their own.</p>
<p>Theoretically, accidental near-identical writing could happen, I guess. I’ll believe it when I see it. Every case of plagiarism of which I am aware involved actual copying, whether or not done consciously.</p>
<p>There are only so many ways to say something, but there are possibly an infinite number of things that could be said–scholarship is based on original thought. So you can say “Shakespeare wrote Hamlet” and not be plagiarizing. but if you said “Shakespeare’s Hamlet epitomizes the same uncertainty principle that Heisenberg delineates in his writing on quantum mechanics” well, that’s an idea, and if someone else formulated it first, you need to acknowledge that. And if in saying it, you use the same words as someone else, you need to quote them. the chances that, on that subject, you chose the same words would be pretty slim. </p>
<p>BTW, I just made up that example because I was reading a layman’s history of science this morning, but as soon as I wrote it I figured it probably wasn’t original, and no, as Igoogle now, I see it wasn’t. Among other places, Michael Frayn uses Hamlet in the play “Copenhagen” which is about Heisenberg and Bohr. Darn–I just proved that it is hard to come up with an entirely new idea. But that’s something we need to know as we write.</p>
<p>garland, you bring up another interesting point about plagiarism. </p>
<p>What happens if you write about a very specialized question for a paper (thinking that it’s an original idea)? However, someone else has already independently written about that same topic. If you submit the paper, have you plagiarized?</p>
<p>This is a topic I’ve always wondered about. If you state a fact, at what point is it plagiarism? “George Washington was the first president of the United States of America.” In a particular history or government class, couldn’t a bunch of people legitimately state that?</p>
<p>That’s why you have to do some due diligence. You do a journal search before you write the paper to make sure the topic hasn’t been covered before. You are familiar enough with the material to know that GW was 1st president is common knowledge. I think a guideline my son was given that if a fact appears in multiple places (at least five was the number he was given) not quoting the same source material it’s probably safe not to source it. This is apparently a sticky area, but this also suggests five sources among other rules of thumb: [Avoiding</a> Common Knowledge Plagiarism](<a href=“http://library.csusm.edu/plagiarism/howtoavoid/how_avoid_common.htm]Avoiding”>http://library.csusm.edu/plagiarism/howtoavoid/how_avoid_common.htm)</p>
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<p>I would say that this is not plagiarism. If the other source is readily available, then you have a different problem, which is failure to do adequate research. The fact that citing sources demonstrates that you have done a good job of researching is sometimes lost on students–they think that citing sources means that they did not do what they were supposed to do, which is write an original paper.</p>
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<p>Well, that would not necessarily be plagiarism, but rediscovering something that has been known for centuries might not impress those who consider it common knowledge (though it may not be common knowledge among others):</p>
<p>[A</a> Mathematical Model for the Determination of Total Area Under Glucose Tolerance and Other Metabolic Curves](<a href=“http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/17/2/152.abstract]A”>http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/17/2/152.abstract)
[Medical</a> researcher discovers integration, gets 75 citations An American Physics Student in England](<a href=“http://fliptomato.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2007/03/19/medical-researcher-discovers-integration-gets-75-citations/]Medical”>Medical researcher discovers integration, gets 75 citations | An American Physics Student in England)</p>
<p>Then again, the subject in question was itself the object of a plagiarism controversy centuries ago:</p>
<p>[Leibniz?Newton</a> calculus controversy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz–Newton_calculus_controversy]Leibniz?Newton”>Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy - Wikipedia)</p>
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<p>More things like these?</p>
<p>Union of Soviet Socialist Republics</p>
<p>Rhode Island and Providence Plantations</p>
<p>California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo</p>
<p>The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark.</p>
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<p>I think that there are many more combinations of words than there are books, articles, webpages, etc. For instance, try googling some of the phrases in your post. When I try googling “Why is it so rare for two people.” I can only find 7 results, 4 of which are this thread, or mirrors of this thread. Even if I try googling just “Coincidental Plagiarism,” I only find about 500 results, again a few of which are this thread or mirrors.</p>
<p>ThereseR–as others have said, it would be my responsibility to look into the scholarship. As it happens, it took me one quick google to find out my comparison had been made before–and no surprise; it was a fairly obvious one. That’s part of the work of scholarship.</p>
<p>ThereseR – I presume your interest is not simple curiosity, but reflects worry that a professor or other teacher could take as plagiarism coincidental identity.</p>
<p>First: plagiarism is intentional. If you come up with an idea and write it up and it later turns out that someone else came up with the same idea but you did not know, then you did not plagiarize. </p>
<p>Second: in my experience it is extremely unlikely that two people writing independently about the same topic would produce identical or nearly identical texts. Even quite unskillful writers have a voice, which dictates word choice, syntax, sentence length, use or avoidance of subordinate clauses, on and on, all of which add up to yield a text that won’t be the same as another’s. That’s why teachers immediately suspect plagiarism when two papers exhibit long stretches of identical or virtually identical text.</p>
<p>Third: this is a powerful argument for working on your writing, to write the very best you can. The more you write, the more attention you pay to your writing, the more you read your own drafts critically and rewrite, the more distinctive a voice you will develop. That distinctive voice will make your writing unmistakably yours.</p>
<p>There is also something called common knowledge, and it is not necessary to cite common knowledge. When you do research, even though you learn things as you begin your work, the information that is common knowledge becomes fairly evident. That takes care of a lot of the phrases that might pop up in some search that identifies phrases.</p>
<p>It’s not plagiarism if one of the two writers did not copy from the other. However, there are billions of combinations of words and ideas. I don’t see why this should ever happen. Yes, some designs are very similar, and some poems represent a similar sentiment, but exactly the same idea with the same words? I don’t see that happening.</p>
<p>It’s like asking why aren’t there more exact faces.</p>
<p>Some people resemble other people, but it’s very rare to have an exact double (including body size and shape) unless one has an unknown identical twin or triplet.</p>
<p>I have never met an exact double of myself or anyone I knew.</p>