Plagiarism Passing off someone else's work as your own, whether word for word or merely the creative ideas. This can amount to copyright infringement if permission has not been obtained from the copyright owner for use of the expressive elements of the work. Even if permission is granted, putting your name on someone else's work is still plagiarism and is unethical within artistic, scientific, academic and political communities.
The definition above comes from NOLO.com. To me it highlights a mind boggling (or should that be blogging) question. If you copy something word for word - no question that it is Plagiarism. If you review several sources on the same topic, use that to spark some "original" thoughts and blog away - that MIGHT be considered Plagiarism. If you even subconsciously recall some element of a creative idea you heard or read somewhere - that MIGHT be considered Plagiarism. Even having copied and pasted the definition above - MIGHT be considered Plagiarism.
How many words must be identical before something is considered plagiarism? If you're going to write about something, for example "Phoenix", or "Real Estate" - those words have been used before, and will be used again. At what point does it cross the line from being "original" to being "plagiarism"?
Plagiarism.org offers up Turnitin and iThenticate as two methods of combating plagiarism. Don't know what they charge for these options - pricing isn't published on their site - you have to request a quote.
Just as MS Word offers spell-check and grammar-check, perhaps it should offer plagiarism-check?!
But, joking apart, where is the line drawn, and how can it be recognized?
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Per the U.S. Copyright Office, a couple of the things that are not protected by copyright:
Ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles, discoveries, or devices, as distinguished from a description, explanation, or illustration
Works consisting entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorship (for example: standard calendars, height and weight charts, tape measures and rulers, and lists or tables taken from public documents or other common sources)
Thus, if you research and then come up with your own ideas based on that research and write this in your own words, it isn't copyrighted. As for plagiarism, hmmm. Gonna have to research that one and see how, if any, the legal definition varies. It sounds from your quote like they're using the two terms interchangably for their purposes. I'd guess that your quote, unless it's a substantial part of the work, and considering the use that you're putting it to, would fall under the "Fair Use" category, though that's a slim reed to lean on in a court of law - Fair Use is decided almost on a case by case basis because the definition is somewhat vague.
Anyway: U.S. Copyright Office plain text page on their website (though you can get to the statutes from there if you really want to - I haven't done so in a while). The info here can be helpful in dealing with this conundrum, I've found in my other life as a volunteer editor.