8 ways Melania Trump can avoid plagiarism in future speeches

Poor Melania Trump. Her speech before the Republican national convention in Cleveland on Monday night was adroit, heartfelt, borderline inspiring and also, it appears, partially plagiarized.

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It’s impossible to know whether this was intentional or unintentional plagiarism (yes, there’s a difference) on the part of the 46-year-old wife of presumptive Republican Presidential Nominee Donald Trump.

The former model and native of Slovenia, Yugoslavia hasn’t spent much time on the national stage, except quietly by Trump’s side. Who knows what pressure she and her speech writer’s felt? Did they just pick up the repurposed paragraph of First Lady Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech for her then presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee Barack Obama? Or did Melania Trump go hunting for exemplars, find Obama’s text online and simply cut and paste her favorite bits?

The world may never know, but since Melania Trump is certain to take the stage again in the next few months, we’ve created a handy guide for her on how to avoid casual plagiarism.

Our list of nine things to avoid is based, in part, on a canny list from the University of New South Wales in Australia of reasons one might plagiarize and how to address those issue. The text assumes that the writer, in this case future speech-giver Melania Trump, will do some research. All of this should help her (and you) learn the right way to approach researching, writing, sourcing and speaking out loud.

1. Intellectual Insecurity

We don’t know what we don’t know and in situations where we’re asked to talk or write about something outside our wheelhouse, panic can set it. Surely Melanie, who is college-educated (perhaps) and speaks four languages, may still have felt the cold sweats as she and her team spent days working on this critical speech. The solution, though, is not to find someone else’s ideas or information and appropriate them as your own.

In the future, we suggest Melania stops, takes a deep breath and considers how she really thinks and feels about the subject. Yes, she should read texts, lots of them. Sleeping on all she’s learned can help synthesis it all into more cohesive thought and speech.

2. Poor time management

All of this should help her (and you) learn the right way to approach researching, writing, sourcing and speaking out loud.

We know Melania and company worked for a while on this speech, but between the apparent plagiarism and the near-positive Rick-Roll, we have to wonder if they ran out of time and, with huge gaps in the final speech, simply dropped in the nearest thing at hand, which apparently was a lyric from a Rick Astley video on YouTube.

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In this case, make sure that your time is well-spent and, if you sense you’re running out of time, close whatever content gaps you have (cinch them right up!) and just make sure you have decent transitions from one thought to another. Avoid going in search of bits and pieces to augment your speech.

3. Lack of a clear argument

Melania Trump’s speech was clearly designed to humanize Donald Trump. It could have been as personal as she wanted. There were some good, solid lines in there, like, “His children have been cared for and mentored to the extent that even his adversaries admit they are an amazing testament to who he is as a man and a father.” But it fell short of painting a full picture of Donald Trump as a husband and father.

And that may have been Melania’s biggest error. She could have stuck with the personal side of Trump and built and built that argument up throughout your speech, possibly offering an anecdote or two (the speech did not have a single anecdote – a rookie error).

If she had done so, Melania could have avoided outside sources altogether.

4. Lack of critical analysis

As the Trump campaign admitted, Melania used “fragments that reflected her own thinking.” That’s a completely valid approach. However, Melania left out a key ingredient: analysis of those fragments. You can read any number of speeches that seek to elevate someone else or some larger idea. The idea is that you read them and then look at the source, potentially Michelle Obama, and even her sources, to help you understand the core meaning and then be able to use her words as inspiration for your text.

Granted, it’s not easy to read a lot of source material and not be influenced. It is the fear of most writers to accidentally repeat a source.

5. Poor note-taking

In the days leading up to this speech, Melania and her team must’ve pored over dozens of sources, cutting and pasting ideas and maybe even taking copious notes. If we could see those notes (okay, maybe they burned all of them), would we see annotations? Would each source be noted? As Melania prepares for her next speech, she should develop a system. Notes should include the name of the source, the publication or web site, date and date in which she took the note.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

6. Poor referencing skills

Imagine for a moment, if Melania had paused right before beginning the line “From a young age” and inserted, “as Michelle Obama once said." That would have been enough of a nod to acknowledge her alleged source. You see, you can quote at length as long as you note the source. On the other hand, Rick Astley’s lyrics are so far into the public domain, I’m not sure it would have been necessary.

7. Underdeveloped writing skills

If writing or speech-making isn’t your thing, it can be daunting to speak in front of a national audience for 15 minutes or more. Practice will help, but it might make sense to do some of it out of the spotlight. Melania Trump should choose a topic like, The Best Lunch in New York City or Slovenia vs. Manhattan, and then write short speeches supporting these ideas on her own. Perhaps she can make them in front of Donald Trump and gauge his reaction, though she does run the risk of him saying every one of them is spectacular.

8. Cheating

Sometimes, people intentionally steal other people’s work and present it as their own. We’re not accusing Melania Trump of that, but would advise, as UNSW does: Just don’t.