Sunday, April 17, 2005

Plagiarism



What is plagiarism?

Georgetown University has a good site here which answers many questions.

Stanford University likewise has a take on the whole subject here.

And the Owl Writing Labortatory at Purdue University has the following:

"Academic writing in American institutions is filled with rules that writers often don’t know how to follow. A working knowledge of these rules, however, is critically important; inadvertent mistakes can lead to charges of plagiarism or the unacknowledged use of somebody else’s words or ideas. While other cultures may not insist so heavily on documenting sources, American institutions do. A charge of plagiarism can have severe consequences, including expulsion from a university..."
From the Council of Writing Program Administrators
http://www.wpacouncil.org comes the WPA statement on Plagiarism:


"Definition:

In an instructional setting, plagiarism occurs when a writer deliberately uses someone else’s language, ideas, or other original (not common-knowledge) material without acknowledging its source. This definition applies to texts published in print or on-line, to manuscripts, and to the work of other student writers...."

Michelle Malkin has this contemporary piece on plagiarism and particularly LEFT writers, politicos, terrorists and media types that are so revered in the MSM:

A poetry scholar is accused of plagiarism, the New York Times reports. He joins a club with a large and growing number of public figures in it:

-Doris Kearns Goodwin
-Stephen Ambrose
-Nina Totenberg
-Laurence Tribe
-Charles Ogletree, Jr.
-Alex Haley
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
-Joe Biden, Jr.
-Osama bin Laden
-Ruth Shalit
-Fox Butterfield

Related:
-Kieran Healy, "Copycats"
-Contentious, "Online Plagiarists Are Easy to Catch"
-David M, "Serial plagiarism exposed"


Original thoughts and attribution are always the best policy.

No comments:

Post a Comment