For those who care ...

Grant, thank you. My question "Is that it?" was primarily addressed to the rest of the forum because you are indeed the only person who actually said (briefly) what they do. I was just checking to see if others do the same.

But re-check your post. You wrote 11 sentences. Ten of them were about how and what it's like to write. Thus my label of "advice on a writing career".

Gail, I was looking for simple answers about people's methods. That's why I wrote my OP in a simple fashion but with enough information and deft to demonstrate that I know what my question is about. After your 1st response, I tried to detail this. We're all adults here and know what copyright is, yet you're still repeating "ideas can't be copyrighted." Therefore my label of patronizing.

(BTW, as an aside, even if an editor "steals" just my ideas instead of a full article and uses & gets credit for them, that might not be illegal, but it doesn't mean it's right.)

That notwithstanding, only in your last post did you finally address my question, which was simply how do you prove you're the true author of an article. Even after my 2nd clarifying post, you wrote "standard copyright violation". Yes, we all know it is, but that doesn't matter if you can't prove it. Thus my label of non-comprehension.

As you end up saying, "Claims without prove [sic] are just hot air". Exactly. A simple piece of paper with your name on it isn't proof. If you say that going through the process of getting email server logs isn't cost prohibitive for an author of an article, then okay, that finally sounds like your answer. And that's fine and all you had to say. I mentioned my suspicion of it in my last post because it didn't seem viable (David vs Goliath). That's all.

Jeff, I think it's obvious that my original, informally-worded question indicated I never believed this to be a legal forum.

And no, Grant's response was not part of a patronizing lecture. Re-read my comment please. I said "a patronizing lecture on what copyright is", not plural, nor a "stream" of them. You're generalizing. My point was that up to then, other than Grant's answer, there were no "points and questions" to embrace.

As to the worth of my own work, I didn't expect to get any money from it. But I do value credit. That's why I was wondering if there are any good, but cheaper and more informal methods.

And if you felt I was being a bit nasty, know that it was because I felt I was being a bit belittled by many of the responses. I asked a simple question. What I got seemed to be based on assumptions that I'm a naive, aspiring writer. But I was mostly just perplexed that people here, working in detail-oriented database jobs, seemed unable to target my actual question. In contrast, I found a direct answer without even asking, after a 2-minute search, on About.com! So I thought that was odd.