The other day I was reading a home improvement magazine and was caught by an article’s opening phrase that began, ‘Let’s be blunt.’ I liked it, and made a mental note to try it out in an article I was writing at work.

Now I’m wondering if I was just being creatively lazy. Two recent incidents made me question when lifting a few words from another writer’s work crosses the line into bald-faced plagiarism.

We’ve all heard the recent story about how 19-year-old Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan ‘borrowed’ numerous passages verbatim from another author’s work for her highly-touted debut novel. She seems like a bright kid, but apparently not bright enough to realize that if you’re going to steal, don’t steal from a successful, best-selling author.

Now comes news that William Swanson, chairman and CEO of Raytheon Corp., lifted some content for his “Swanson’s Unwritten Rules of Management” booklet that was distributed free to 250,000 people inside and outside the company. (Turns out some of these unwritten rules had been written before, in a 1944 book, “The Unwritten laws of Engineering.”) Poor Kaavya lost a $500,000 book deal, but Swanson will lose much more — approximately $1 miliion in salary increase and incentive-stock compensation that the Raytheon board revoked when they heard of his indiscretion. He must be wondering how they got their hands on a copy of “The Unwritten Laws of Engineering.”

Is it ever okay to use any of another writer’s work — even if it’s in an obscure 1944 engineering book? And not just is it likely you’ll never be found out. Is it ever ethical?