Do you have advice for someone who is deathly scared of accidental plagiarism?
i would say google it but really i don't think you should. if you google anything relatively small and simple, you will probably find someone else who has said it before. this will make you doubt yourself away from doing it, when really it's probably fine. it could be a really obscure mention you just found. i think you should think what you want and say what you want. in plagiarism court cases, they are supposed to prove access, and prove that you have seen or heard the thing. so if you really said what you said without seeing or hearing the thing, then you should be ok. you also don't get in any trouble unless the thing you are doing gets really famous. so in that way you can use 'murphy's law' in your favor