Duplicate content penalty for form default content

[web-content-king]

Tell me if this will get me a duplicate content penalty:

I am putting the HTML code of the main body of my page in a form text area to make it easier to copy and paste it for visitors who want to copy the text.

Example:
http://<br /> <a href="http://www.u....htm</a><br />
Do the search engine spiders scan what's in the forms?

[bhartzer]

You won't get a penalty for that. Duplicate content penalties are usually for duplicate pages, not duplicated content on the same page. In your case, you have a legitimate use for duplicating content on that page.

[web-content-king]

thank you for the reply.

You mean there isn't a duplicate content penalty for content that's on the same page? Hmm...if I were creating a dup. content penalty I'd create one for that, though I'd completely ignore what's in forms and stuff like that.

While we're on the subject, is there a duplicate content penalty for "printer-friendly" pages, like PDFs?

[bhartzer]

No, generally not--they will most likely pick one (not usually the PDF) and use one page instead of the other. Since your "print version" is actually different (a lot of it is "stripped out", like navigation, etc.) then those pages aren't duplicates anyway.

If you're worried about repeating text on the same page, you could use a framed page. But, again, I don't think you're going to run in to an issue.