Deciding what type of article you want to write depends on what you want to say. An application story is one popular type of article because it addresses how company solved a problem or addressed a specific need. Your PR comes in by suggesting this case history to editors. Readers can learn through article how your product can be used in their lives by it's previous success.

How to articles are also popular, and are aimed at editors, executives, managers, and professionals. You could also write an article based on new products, trends in industry, or developments. Just remember to keep your topic newsworthy if you want anyone to publish it.

"Probably just a coincidence", I thought to myself, and kept reading. But first paragraph stopped me in my tracks. It was quite clearly plagiarized from my article. As I kept reading I recognized sentence after sentence that had been lifted from my article and then modified slightly.

The whole article was plagiarized. I could hardly believe it. As English say, I was 'gob-smacked'.

------------------------------ What Is Plagiarism? ------------------------------

'Plagiarism' comes from Latin word 'plagiarius', a kidnapper. Here are two dictionary definitions of plagiarism:

'[to] take (the work or idea of someone else) and pass it off as one's own' (Concise Oxford Dictionary, Third Edition, 1999).

'to appropriate ideas, passages etc. from another work or author' (Collins Dictionary of English Language, ed. P. Hanks 1979).

Plagiarism can be done in many ways, but most common technique is to paraphrase someone else's words.

Here's an example:

Original:

"And if you've matched ezine to product you're selling, you've reached your target audience."

Plagiarized version:

"If you have correctly matched ezine or newsletter to product you're selling, then you will have reached your target audience."

As you can see, plagiarist has simply taken original and then replaced phrase 'you've matched' with phrase 'you have correctly matched', inserted words 'or newsletter', and replaced word 'you've' with words 'then you will have'.

Part of reason that plagiarism is so rampant on Internet is that many people genuinely believe that it's okay to take someone else's writing, make a few changes, and then present it as their own.

---------------------------------- Is Plagiarism a Crime? ----------------------------------

As far as I know plagiarism is not a crime in most countries, and this is probably because plagiarism is so difficult to define. How many words does a plagiarist have to substitute and rearrange before copied version ceases to be a copy of original?

This is why plagiarism is much more difficult to deal with than copyright theft. A copyright thief simply steals your work, lock-stock-and-barrel. A plagiarist steals your work and disguises it as their own.