Copywrite

[Bbbananas]

If you are, for instance, writing an article for a magazine etc, and you want to use a phrase you have read describing a building or some such thing - surely if you put the phrase in quotation marks, to indicate it was said by someone else, somewhere else - that is not the same as infringeing copywrite rules. Is it?

[Old_Geezer]

I would guess, if you have not attributed it, and it is more than a general statement anyone could make, it may well infringe. As long as the original has copywrite. Copywrite owners would want to be acknowledged rather than ignored.

[Mosaic]

People - it's copyright.
It's important to differentiate the two. Copywrite = copy down text.
Copyright = the laws that surround a piece of intellectual 'property'.

Provided you make relatively brief quotations and acknowledge their source you are harming nobody including yourself.

[jno]

Not usually. If it's only a couple of words nobody is likely to notice anyway if you don't use quote marks; if it's a sentence or two they'd probably be happy to have their name mentioned as the originator of the quote. (Longer chunks, without mentioning where they came from, would probably be plagiarism.)

I suppose just ask yourself: If I'd originated that quote, how happy would I be to see someone else using it, with/without attribution?

[Bbbananas]

I read a description by someone of the Church of St Joan D'Arc in Rouen - I thought it summed up the architecture of the building perfectly. So I used that description, using quotation marks, in an article I wrote. But it is a description that anyone else could easily come up with.

[Old_Geezer]

Darn, I was going to check the spelling before I posted, and forgot. I put it down to being old.

[Old_Geezer]

See you in court then :-)

[Mosaic]

Yes, but as someone else did - then acknowledging that person's words is the correct thing to do.

[Bbbananas]

you're quite right mosaic - copyright. I always get that mixed up!!

It wasn't really a quote as such that I used, more a description of something.

[Mosaic]

Aye Sall but it's still someone else's words. If you had written the description, then found it word for word in someone else's article passed off as if they had written it, you'd be tee'd off.
I also believe it makes for respect all round to acknowledge someone else's work, however great or small they are. Concomitantly, it demeans a writer not to pay this courtesy.

[Mosaic]

If you don't want to acknowledge another source, write down their description in your own words. That way you're in the clear.

[Bbbananas]

But I don't know whose description it actually is... I read it somewhere on t'internet and was impressed by it. I never made a note of the site, and now can't find it. It was a 6 word description that I put in quotation marks to show that I had read it somewhere.

[jno]

if all it said was that the church was tall and inspiring, I wouldn't bother; adjectives like that are free for public use. But if it said it was "a symphony in stone, a memorial for ever to the Maid of Orleans" or something equally unusual and wordy, it would be worth naming the author.

[Bbbananas]

no - nothing as poetic as that. Just used the words modern, masterpiece, architecture, the sort of words anyone could come up with when trying to describe the look of the exterior of the church.

[jno]

sorry, didn't see your last post. If you've tried and failed to find the original, then there's nothing much you can do about it. You could say "It has been called the dadeda..." to indicate you didn't come up with the phrase yourself, and leave it at that.

[Bbbananas]

Thanks guys. I haven't sent the article off yet, so will endeavour to find the site again. Or change the wording would probably be easier.

[jno]

for 'didn't see your last post' read 'didn't see the one before that'... Anyway, if it's simple non-technical phrasing, I'd just use it without putting it in quote marks. But if it was actually cleverly worded enough to stay in your mind (as it has done), then just "hailed as an architectural masterpiece" or womething...

[Mosaic]

Being practical about these things, as Jno suggests, is the best solution. And saying in your article that you read it online but have lost the source, then gees people up to go online and try and find it - an incentive to read and engage with your piece.