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I Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself
“Yes, you can plagiarize yourself.”
This is an excerpt from Kelly Eden’s piece Can Writing Get You into Dangerous Waters?. Check this section out and I’ll add my infamous two cents after.
5) With plagiarizing yourself
Yes, you can plagiarize yourself. This is fine to do across platforms — you can write the same thing on your blog, on Medium, use it for a TikTok video, and tweet about it.
The problem comes when you copy your own work and regurgitate it on the SAME platform. Medium is especially wary of this and you can get kicked off the platform for multiple offenses.
If you’re going to write on the same topic twice (which is fine to do), make sure you write from a new angle with new information.
I’ve used the same personal situation more than once for essays, but from different perspectives.
For example:
The situation — “My first date with my now husband”
Angle 1: Dating a younger man and my experience of how I felt about that.
Angle 2: Going from friend zone to dating.
Angle 3: First dates that were fun and why.