Last night after a run with Erin I finished up an article on a dentist’s charity work. The first draft focused exclusively on the dentist, and my client came back with instructions to insert a lot of the info about his charity program into the article.

My first stop was the program’s website, which actually is run by my client’s organization. As a writer, I would hate to be known as a plagiarist, but I selected text to cut and paste into my article with abandon. Here’s why:

• I’m not writing hard-hitting exposes here. I’m working for public relations. If an organization wants to say it’s the “largest x” or the “most well-known y,” so be it.
• The copy on a website has usually been approved by all the people (and more) who will be approving my copy. Sometimes I can cut several days off a review process by using boilerplate copy from an approved source.
• Using copy from the main website or other publications assures my client that the tone of my piece will match up with their overall themes. If my prose fits in right away with the info I add from their other pieces, I’ve nailed it.

But cutting and pasting has its pitfalls:

• For one client, I used the structure of their web pages to develop several one-page flyers for each of their products. Turns out they HATE their website, and they wanted to go in a different direction. The good news is they have hired me to do both the flyer revisions and the new web copy.
• If I rely on their copy and their organization for all my ideas, we never come up with any fresh approach. Before I start a project, I usually sit down and think about the piece and the audience and the message. I try to connect the dots about what the piece should say and how before I head to the website to see how they’ve done it before. This way we don’t get trapped into changing a word here and there on what is essentially a tired approach that didn’t go anywhere the first time.