Are quotes and excerpts considered duplicate material?

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   Mekenzieposted 12 years ago

   Are quotes and excerpts considered duplicate material?
   
   I just had a hub tagged for duplicate material.  I did include some actual quotes, and noted they were quotes, and an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times.  Are quotes and excerpts considered duplicate material?

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   chef-de-jourposted 12 years ago

   Looks as if you've overstepped the mark with the quotes and excerpts unfortunately. I had a similar experience with a letter I used in an Anne Frank hub and got slammed with duplicate. It's unnerving, especially when you think you've used the material in an appropriate way!
   I took most of the letter out and paraphrased certain lines then sent the hub for checking and it was fine after that. Perhaps you should perform a similar 'operation' on your excerpts.
   
   It would be good if HubPages had a duplicate button you could press before publication just to be on the safe side. I'm not sure if there is a percentage mark you cross before a hub's labelled as duplicate? 30% 10%?
   Hope it works out for you.

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      Milli Thorntonposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I love your suggestion that HP could provide a way for us to check duplicate content before we publish. Perhaps you could suggest this in the Suggest a New Feature forum? Then we might find out whether such a feature is even technically doable by HP.

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      tirelesstravelerposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      You can always google your quote, etc and they will tell you if its duplicated/

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      Milli Thorntonposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      True. Or use copyscape as suggested by nochance. But with all the research, writing, revising, proofreading and tweaking required to produce quality content, it would be lovely to have this automated, if possible.

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      ThelmaCposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Great idea about a way to check for duplicate content prior to publishing.  I had a similar thing as you described happen to me.

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   Dee aka Nonnaposted 12 years ago

   It would be good to know what the line limit or percentage is.... I like quotes and often beginning or end with one in order to drive a point.  I have seen whole hubs with nothing but quotes.  Also, I thought that as long as you give the proper credit that it is OK.   Again, would be wonderful to know for sure how much is too much.  Thanks for asking the question Mekenzie.

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      littlepiggyposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      So I gather that there is no real "line" that we know not to cross? I have simply avoided quoting AT ALL because I have heard a lot about people being flagged for duplicate content for quoting. But we DO need to quote sometimes for context!

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   nochanceposted 12 years ago

   Quotes and excerpts are duplicate content because they can be found elsewhere on the web. You just need to try to keep them at a minimum in your hubs and you will be fine. hubpages is looking for original content, not things that have already been said. And if you have cited your quotes properly you can often dispute with hubpages if a hub has been unpublished.
   
   If you want to check your hub to see how much duplicate content you have go to www.copyscape.com. You can check your hub's URL against the rest of the web and see how much it thinks is duplicated.

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      Mekenzieposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I loved your idea, however because my hub was removed for my review ... copyscape could not find it.  Thanks for the suggestion, I can surely use this in the future.

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      nochanceposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Copyscape has an option where you can copy up to a certain amount of text and search for it.

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   TIMETRAVELER2posted 12 years ago

   They are not, as long as you cite your sources and don't use too many of them in a hub.

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      Mekenzieposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks Time Traveler, I just found that out as the hub team approved it after I wrote them.

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   BlissfulWriterposted 12 years ago

   They will not trigger duplicate content if you have a very small percentage of quoted text in relation to the number of words in your total Hub.   
   
   If your Hub has triggered the duplicate content software algorithm, then you need to trim some of your quote and excerpts, or add a lot of original text to the Hub.   
   
   If a significant percentage of your article is quotes, then yes, it will be duplicate.   But if your article is 100 sentences and one of those sentence is an exact quote, then no.
   
   Remember that there is no human eyes checking your Hubs for duplicates.  It is  computer software that checks it.  That is why the computer software is not able to see that you gave attribution or credit to your quotes.

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      Mekenzieposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      UPDATE:  I wrote the Hub Team and after they reviewed my hub they republished it.  As you said .. there were no human eyes checking it so it was interpreted as duplicate.  It is now approved and up.  YEAH!!!!

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      Milli Thorntonposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Way to go, Mekenzie. Glad you got your Hub republished! Thank you for asking the question/starting this thread. It's been very helpful reading the replies and hearing about your result.

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   Milli Thorntonposted 12 years ago

   Here's the HubPage's policy. It's not very explicit regarding allowable length for quotes (BlissfulWriter's response on this thread is more specific), but it can help to know what the official word is on the issue.
   
   Scroll down to the heading "Make Your Content Your Own":
   
   http://hubpages.com/learningcenter/great-content

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      Mekenzieposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Thank you Milli, nice to have this reference page.

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