on plagirism and writing
In writing at the college level and beyond, the paper must include original ideas or at least new evidence supporting or countering of old ideas. College level writing cannot just be repetition of what has already been said, something new must be brought to the table. In reading, one will come up with ones' own opinion on the writing and come up in their own minds' reasons they agree or disagree with an argument. The difficulty comes in finding whether or not the opinion is original. So instead of spending time coming up with something new, more time is spent finding something that hasn't already been used. For an old work, say of Plato's writings, the amount of criticism for it is enormous. It would be with great difficulty to find whether your opinion on something in Plato's writings is original or your evidence to support your opinion is original. Is there anything that can be done to avoid plaigirism without an enormous amount of research and time just to see if one's ideas are original?

And when you find that your own idea has already been brought up before, do you need to attribute it to those that have already brought up the idea? Can you say "This idea is the same/similar/agrees with John Smith's The Book and other people."

Avoiding plaigirism is easy but still does not address the problem of coming up with an original idea.