Is this plagiarism?

Capital Community College has a web page that helps people understand just what is, and what is not, plagiarism:

http://www.ccc.commnet.edu/mla/plagiarism.shtml

In a hypothetical example from this web page, the original text is from Elaine Tyler May's "Myths and Realities of the American Family" and reads as follows:

"Because women's wages often continue to reflect the fiction that men earn the family wage, single mothers rarely earn enough to support themselves and their children adequately. And because work is still organized around the assumption that mothers stay home with children, even though few mothers can afford to do so, child-care facilities in the United States remain woefully inadequate."

If the following text were part of a student paper, would it be plagiarism?

"As Elaine Tyler May points out, 'women's wages often continue to reflect the fiction that men earn the family wage' (588). Thus many single mothers cannot support themselves and their children adequately. Furthermore, since work is based on the assumption that mothers stay home with children, facilities for day care in this country are still 'woefully inadequate.' (May 589)."

In my opinion this is a borderline case, which shows that what constitutes plagiarism is not always obvious. The answer on the above web page might surprise you. It certainly surprised me.

Question about plagiarism and its definition crop up in many situations other than student papers. For example, The Office of Research Integrity of the US HHS Department has a policy on plagiarism:

http://ori.dhhs.gov/policies/plagiarism.shtml

Following is an excerpt from this web page:

"Substantial unattributed textual copying of another's work means the unattributed verbatim or nearly verbatim copying of sentences and paragraphs which materially mislead the ordinary reader regarding the contributions of the author. ORI generally does not pursue the limited use of identical or nearly-identical phrases which describe a commonly-used methodology or previous research ... "

Although the context here is scientific publishing, I believe the distinction between "substantial unattributed textual copying" and "limited use of identical or nearly-identical phrases" is of more general applicability. To accuse someone of plagiarism because of the use of a short phrase (which could easily have been thought up independently) would be ridiculous in any context.

The entire paragraph could have been quoted verbatim, with proper attribution.

It is borderline, but the repeated quote marks and citations do attribute to the original author, if rather ham-handedly.

It's reassuring to know that someone agrees with me.

gives the clear impression that that is the student's conclusion based on the facts presented by May, rather than a continuation of May's thought. I would definitely comment on that paper, and speak to the student about proper attribution...

There is no attempt to use the words/ideas of another as the student's own.

Such an attempt would be unlikely when the student knows that the instructor can easily look up the original source.

College students now routinely plagiarize in the fashion shown in your post. Many students don't consider it plagiarism unless they directly quote the entire source, word for word, without attribution. The norm is rephrasing what the original author said, not writing any kind of real analysis by the student.

Thirty years ago the example given would have been an offense that could get a student a failing grade, but now it is closer to the norm. The ability of students to write intelligently and independently is a shadow of what it once was. I read columns in major newspapers every day by professional writers who don't know such simple things as when to use "effect" and when to use "affect." Writing skills today are in decline.

not a severe punishment. In a borderline case like this, some will call it plagiarism, and some won't. It is reasonable to disagree about that.

Newspapers, magazines, and even books are full of mistakes like confusing "effect" with "affect". It seems that proofreading is a lost art.

Quotes should only be used in school papers if the language has a special quality which will be lost if paraphrased.

The passage should have been paraphrased and then properly cited.

I would shudder at the prospect of my work being paraphrased by this particular student.

though it is fairly minor. One should not quote verbatim ANY text from another source without full attribution.

I would hope that the student would learn that lesson before turning in another assignment.

But certainly not punishable under the rules for academic misconduct in our University system:

(1) Academic misconduct is an act in which a student:
(a) Seeks to claim credit for the work or efforts of another without authorization or citation;

It becomes a teachable moment. I have corrected dozens of similar errors over the last week as I've graded freshman essays. Hopefully, they'll cite correctly the next time 'round.

Obviously one couldn't know for sure without talking with the student. But I don't think an intent to mislead can be ruled out, particularly since (a) the second author saw fit to put the two-word phrase "woefully inadequate" in quotes, but quoted much longer passages without quotes; and (b) while ambiguous, the "thus" after the initial, attributed phrase, would suggest (to a reader who wasn't familiar with the original text) that the second author was drawing a conclusion based on the initial observation, rather than repeating the original author's conclusion in addition to their observation.

Just like if you take someone's data AND DO NOT CITE IT, no matter how little thats fraud.
I have several writers in my family and all it takes for plagiarism is an idea which can be a short phrase or two. For instance, a term like "raging moderate" is two words, but its an idea coined by a couple of authors I know. If I saw that term used in another political book, and it wasn't attributed thats intellectual theft. \
Also, if someone calls attention to a similarity of turn of phrase, if the writer does NOT edit and remove the phrase they can be sued.
Please remember that Vanilla Ice was SUED for THREE OR FOUR notes in a song. Just because its "short" doesn't mean theft is excusable.

What it usually means is that there is little or no evidence of theft. Not all lawsuits have merit.

Three or four notes in a row do not necessarily constitute a melody. Even with the same rhythm, they may have been composed independently. For example, compare "Istanbul, not Constantinople" with "Putting on the Ritz". They start off the same. So what?

The phrase "raging moderate" is a good example. In my opinion, it could easily have been coined independently by someone else. I would not jump to the conclusion that it was stolen.

When I googled the phrase "raging moderate", I got 19,900 hits. Does that mean there are 19,899 thieves out there?

for 30 or 40 years so I expect that there is a lot of legitimate use IE CITATION of the terminology in lots of publications. If its used without citation it would be theft. However it can be hard to find it, especially if the author owner doesn't attempt to look. This is why plagiarism is so insidious because a lot of people feel like they can do it and it won't be noticed. Its like the person who steals a candy bar. Not as bad as robbing a bank, true but its still theft even if no one notices. IMO, this person should be roundly criticized so they make sure they never make this "mistake" (intentional or otherwise) again.
And you should be aware that musicians are VERY picky about how similar written music sounds to what they have written. A rap artist who wants to sample even a short musical phrase has to get permission.

by two or more people, and therefore the absence of citation is weak evidence, at best, of plagiarism. This is true in music as well as literature.

Sampling is audio recording, which is different in that the evidence of copying is very strong.

There are other cases where the absence of citation is not plagiarism. It is allusion, not plagiarism, if the original source is so well known that the author assumes the reader knows it. Phrases like "through a glass darkly" and "as the night the day" need no citation. The same goes for "modest proposal", "more equal than others", and many other well-known phrases coined by modern authors.

To follow up on what I wrote before: the same musical phrase occurs in both of the following songs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv-KcF3Rkv8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH2nQHPs4aA

When played in the key of C minor, the phrase is C E-flat G G (with the second G an octave lower than the first). The rhythm is the same in both songs.

On edit: if you don't count the rhythm, the common phrase is longer: C E-flat G G C E-flat

What do you think: did one songwriter steal this phrase, or were the two songs composed independently?

unless you cite it correctly. In-citing and your Work Cited page needs to be absolutely correct. At my school, you can be suspended for making an error with your citing. Yes, an error. My school also teaches an intensive basic writing course followed by a more intensive Comp I, which focuses on Citing. They do not tolerate plagiarism.

Do you think it impossible that two people could coin the same three-word phrase independently?

What if the student never saw the passage he or she is being accused of having plagiarized?

I find it extremely difficult to paraphrase something that has been written well. I guess the whole point is to internalize the concept then write it in your own words. Sometimes, your own words come out close to what was already written.

I found that by doing lots of research on one topic, the same idea has been written in many different ways...thus, citing becomes an important part of the paper. Correct citing, either using MLA, or APA or whatever is required.

Let's say I write an essay on "The Godzilla Syndrome". (I just made that up.) What the phrase means to me is explained in my essay. Say I hand in the essay, and the instructor thinks it might not be original. S/he googles the phrase "godzilla syndrome" and gets 516 hits.

I may be in deep doodoo, even though I was unaware that my phrase had ever been used before. I may be in even deeper doodoo if it turns out that someone else's paper assigns this phrase a meaning similar to mine. Will anyone believe me when I deny having seen that other paper? And even if the instructor believes me, am I negligent for not having googled the phrase myself?

and at the library. When I wrote my recent paper on the Beatles and JFK, I had so many different articles and other essay papers with the exact same info. I used a JFL quote that I could find on only one website and had to cite that. Citing websites is a pain in the ass. The best way I learned how to cite was by using NoodleTools, which does all the work for you.

I did not realize when I took this course that citing would involve so much work, but it does. And with plagiarism as serious a "crime" as it is, it is really important to research the hell out of anything you write.

I think we are starting to communicate, unlike Cool Hand Luke.

On DU, I cite web pages (not websites) by providing a link. If I had to write a paper, I would try like hell to find the same information in a book or journal. Printed matter has the advantage that it doesn't change or malfunction after you have cited it.

But I have seen two books with the same ISBN and other bibliographic info. but slightly different contents. It's not supposed to happen, but it does.

not plagarism.

if one author wrote the same work that is listed under the same isbn, the matter at hand is not plagarism. it's sloppy bibliographic work. people who deal in books assign isbns to works that HAVE no isbn b/c they were printed before isbns existed. this is just a matter of stupidity on the part of the person making the claim, of not understanding what this identification number means.

you were asking about using someone else's words and attributing them to yourself. that's an entirely different issue.

janz and I have already demonstrated to you that this is unacceptable practice in any academic entity. there's no "maybe" about it.

there is no gray area. it's simply a matter of copyright infringement to claim something as your original work when it is not when something is considered unique enough to qualify as intellectual property.

1. I mentioned slight differences in books with the same ISBN as an example, not of plagiarism, but of how difficult it is to give a complete citation. This is rare, but when it happens, someone checking a source may find that it does not exactly agree with the citation.

2. I was not asking about using someone else's words and attributing them to myself. I agree that that would be unacceptable practice in any academic entity. I was asking about a hypothetical situation in which the same phrase was coined independently by two people.

It was a online course, and we were encouraged to discuss our assignments. One day, I read someone's response to an assignment, and it seemed canned to me. So I copy/pasted one of her sentences into Google and up comes an email that had been making the rounds about Obama taking away guns. She had copy/pasted the entire email and used it as her submitted homework.

So, I started doing that with my own writing. I'd write out a sentence into Google and see if anything came up that was close to what I wrote. Sometimes I'd hit pay dirt, sometimes I'd get nothing. It is nearly impossible to not write something similar to what someone else has written. But your concept is allowed to be different, even if your words are close to the same thing. Just be sure you cite your source. All people really want is credit for what they have written (most of the time.)

Oh, and make sure you reserach Advanced Google or .edu when you research anything, BTW. No reason to be scared by anything. Just keep in mind that bloggers also need to be credited for anything they write. Register with NoodleTools. It's free and it helps.

I'd give it a strong warning and then would pay careful attention on the next paper.

So far, three replies say it's plagiarism, and three say it isn't.

Plagiarism does not always happen deliberately. The well-known historian Doris Kearns Goodwin got nailed for it, and she's VERY good at what she does:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Kearns_Goodwin#Plagiarism_controversy
Like at least one person in this thread, I've just finished grading research essays. I couldn't bear to look at this post for awhile...;-).

It's getting harder and harder to grade research essays since there's so much information available online. Some students plagiarize without meaning to, and others simply steal material from online sources or buy them from fee-charging web sites that provide students with ready-made essays. I avoid the latter situation because my assignments are too specific to allow for that.

The online world is also conducive to plagiarism because many commercial information and news organizations trade paragraphs all the time. As you've probably noticed from reading online "news," an AP story will surface and get distributed to many online "sources," and from there, the same wording will appear in snippets from various outlets.

"turn it in" or some such name is a site that profs use that scan works for quotes that are not attributed correctly.

if a student doesn't attribute a quote, it's an "F" and a violation of academic standards with discipline for the same where I went to U and at the U where I worked.

Whether it seems harsh or not is not the case. The point is that it is plagarism because it is using someone's words and claiming them as one's own.

This is the highest level of "intellectual theft" in academia.

As far as the number of words - any phrase that is distinctly attributed to a writer who came before that's reused would at the least need to be acknowledged.

someone may think of the phrase "the cruelest month" now but the phrase goes to T.S. Eliot because he published it and it is associated with his body of work. someone may use the phrase when they do so in a way that acknowledges its source.

If a student used the phrase "the cruelest month" in a way unrelated to The Waste Land, that student might be guilty of cultural illiteracy but innocent of plagiarism.

if someone wanted to make an issue about it.

the phrase "the cruelest month," if used without an acknowledgment of its source would be akin to claiming it as someone's own work because it has been published under the author's name and the author has copyright to his intellectual property, i.e. the placement and choice of words.

if a student used the phrase and tried to claim it as his or her own work, the professor would be required to tell the student that the student was, whether intentionally or not, trying to claim authorship for something that was not original and could not be claimed as original work.

George Harrison wrote "My Sweet Lord" and was taken to court over the placement of two sets of notes... two motifs.. the claim was copyright infringement from the owner of the song "He's So Fine."

here's the point in that case that relates to your question:

The Court noted that HSF incorporated two basic musical phrases, which were called "motif A" and "motif B". Motif A consisted of four repetitions of the notes "G-E-D" or "sol-mi- re"; B was "G-A-C-A-C" or "sol-la-do-la-do", and in the second use of motif B, a grace note was inserted after the second A, making the phrase "sol-la-do-la-re-do". The experts for each party agreed that this was a highly unusual pattern.

Harrison's own expert testified that although the individual motifs were common enough to be in the public domain, the combination here was so unique that he had never come across another piece of music that used this particular sequence, and certainly not one that inserted a grace note as described above.

Harrison's composition used the same motif A four times, which was then followed by motif B, but only three times, not four. Instead of a fourth repetition of motif B, there was a transitional phrase of the same approximate length. The original composition as performed by Billy Preston also contained the grace note after the second repetition of the line in motif B, but Harrison's version did not have this grace note.

Harrison's experts could not contest the basic findings of the Court, but did attempt to point out differences in the two songs. However, the judge found that while there may have been modest alterations to accommodate different words with a different number of syllables, the essential musical piece was not changed significantly. The experts also pointed out that Harrison's version of MSL omitted the grace note, but the judge ruled that this minor change did not change the genesis of the song as that which previously occurred in HSF.

With all the evidence pointing out the similarities between the two songs, the judge said it was "perfectly obvious . . . the two songs are virtually identical". The judge was convinced that neither Harrison nor Preston consciously set out to appropriate the melody of HSF for their own use, but such was not a defense.

Harrison conceded that he had heard HSF prior to writing MSL, and therefore, his subconscious knew the combination of sounds he put to the words of MSL would work, because they had already done so. Terming what occurred as subconscious plagiarism, the judge found that the case should be re-set for a trial on the issue of damages.

This ruling as to the copyright infringement was upheld on appeal with little comment. The appellate court noted that an infringement can be established when the holder of the copyright demonstrates that the second work is substantially similar to the protected work and the second composer had "access" to the first work. Harrison conceded that he had indeed heard HSF when it was popular, thus establishing the second point.

http://abbeyrd.best.vwh.net/mysweet.htm

People can "subconsciously plagarize" work - read something and then forget that it's the work of someone else. but, in the Harrison case, the judge still held that a claim for damages could be made because he profited from the use the other musician's work.

I think unintentional copying of someone else's work is more common in music than in literature. It's just too easy to think you came up with a tune when you really heard it played by someone else.

A minor quibble: it is ignorance of the law that is said to be no excuse. Ignorance of someone else's work would be a valid defense; otherwise there would be no point to the statement that "Harrison conceded that he had indeed heard HSF when it was popular".

because Harrison had prior exposure to the work.

But Harrison's defense did attempt to claim ignorance and the judge settled on unintentional copyright infringement because, even if the use was not intentional, it was still infringement.

According to the web page you quoted, "The judge was convinced that neither Harrison nor Preston consciously set out to appropriate the melody of HSF for their own use, but such was not a defense." This is different from your statement that "Harrison's ignorance that he was copying was no excuse", which the judge never said.

Also according to the web page you quoted: "The appellate court noted that an infringement can be established when the holder of the copyright demonstrates that the second work is substantially similar to the protected work and the second composer had 'access' to the first work."

The "access" is the key. Without it, Harrison would have been truly ignorant of the other melody. In fact, he knew it, even if he didn't know that he knew it.

By the way, the web page you quoted says "This article is copyrighted by Joseph C. Self, 1993 and The 910, 1993. All rights reserved." Your quotation is a little too long and may itself constitute copyright infringement.

However, I'm not claiming it as my own work, which was the issue you initially addressed.

Plagiarism and copyright infringement are related, but distinct, concepts. Even if you infringed copyright (which is doubtful), you certainly did not plagiarize that website.

I would be very slow to accuse anyone of plagiarism. To my way of thinking, if there is no intent to steal someone else's work, there is no plagiarism. In judging intent, I would take skill (or the lack of it) into consideration. The example I used to start this thread involves a hypothetical student with poor writing skills. I would give that student the benefit of the doubt and say there was no intent to steal ideas or phrases, and therefore no plagiarism.

But that's just my opinion. Others have a broader concept of plagiarism, including "accidental plagiarism". Legally, they are probably right.

you could take that example to any professor in any major U. in any dept. in the nation and I would doubt you would find anyone who would not call that plagiarism.

Even if every professor on Earth agreed with you, that would not prove me wrong. It would only prove that mine is a minority opinion.

This is a not a question of fact, but of interpretation. Several different opinions about that first example have been expressed in this thread. None of them, including mine, is simply wrong.

When I was a TA and a graduate student, I learned to be tolerant of opinions that are different from my own.

that won't be "dogmatic." lol.

if you don't understand the difference b/t being a TA and hearing various opinions and established academic standards... you just don't.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Had Harrison never heard "He's So Fine", he'd have won his case. :hi:

my subject header overstated the issue of subconscious copyright infringement.

in Harrison's case, the motif was so well known, he wouldn't have been believed if he'd claimed he'd never heard it.

If I were to claim to have independently authored a song (and a dance!) called "the Macarena", the onus would be on me to show that I hadn't heard the original if I were to be challenged in court by the original copyright holders. Unless I'd been in coma for the last twenty years, or stranded on a desert island, this would be next to an impossible task.

The possibility of independent creation seems to me to be common sense. I'm glad to hear that it is embedded in copyright law.

This is an inadequate attempt at paraphrase--and even good paraphrase needs to be cited. It looks as if the student just changed a couple of words or phrases, essentially retaining the author's writing.

The student would be better off using a quotation in this instance, with required citation (in-text and Works Cited if using MLA style).

of course failure if he/she did it again.

it's safer that way. :D

honestly it's that middle sentence is the one that bugs me. the other two could be cleaned up with "active quotation!" (tm) (fuck if i remember who it belongs to) where you mention the author's name and then bracket in quotation marks "highlight words" to express that the next batch of ideas have zero to do with you.

or you could quote in full by indentation, as has been mentioned already. except a lot of professors are putting limitations on how many indented 'block o'text' quotations you can have in a paper. so that's tending to go by the wayside, too; damned if you do, damned if you don't sorta thing.

i honestly think that in 50 years or less though a lot of this over-citation & hypersensitivity to copyright is just going to be ignored. publishing has been exponentially expanding in the past 500 years, and copyright lawsuit going nuts in the past 100 years. people are getting sick of the idea that even miniscule creations are limited in ownership; three words or less, three musical notes or less, colors from nature, bacteria for certain fermented foods, regional names for goods? yeah, people are not going to pay attention to this for all that much longer.

i remember being told by people i personally know who did economy reporting that the next goal for american industry is to leave manufacturing and most white collar service entirely and just survive off of copyright/patent earnings upheld by international court law. i smiled graciously and tried to suppress a laugh. it won't happen. the reset button will be hit far before then. ;)

but in the meanwhile, yes, give credit as best you can and in the manner as the professor likes. and remember, until you get a degree and can run screaming from academia neurosis, you don't get to have a thought in the world! :) just kidding! but really, cite everything just in case -- and leave your own analysis in separate paragraphs as anemic, sycophantic ideas. most departments love that!
:evilgrin:

I'm starting at a big University next fall. From reading all this I'm getting the feeling the professor is going to chew on me like a dog toy.

I'm OK at math, but I like it so much more. Memorize the techniques, memorize the formula, do the homework, take the test. Nobody slams you for getting the same answer.

Mine field anyone?

i will say many commenters here are far stricter than 1/2 my professors. no one can truly keep up with all the standards out there. MLA, Chicago Style, historian endnote (whose name i forgot) style, etc., you never really are secure about what is acceptable until the teacher spells it out in black and white. some allow "ibid" in footnotes, some don't, some don't allow footnotes, just endnotes, some only want bibliographies and page numbers, some know the whole class is working on a fixed source list and ask you to skip bibliographies, some want page number in in-essay citation, some get upset if you waste such space and use end/footnotes. really, it's all just a big ol' mess and changes from department to department, if not professor to professor w/in the same major.

but don't worry about it. just learn to ask questions and visit office hours. that way the professor will understand your intentions and whether or not you can actually think independently about the material. it's the transition from an abysmal writing prompt to an out-of-place articulate essay that really raises alarm bells. most professors understand that academia has umpteen different standards and bouncing around departments for your GE will get you all confused in protocol anyway.

have fun, it's a great opportunity!

Thanks! Been waiting 20 years to do this. Of course, most of the kids there are only a little older then my daughter.

At least I look 10 years younger then I am. ( Or so I think, as my daughter told me. :) )

you make the best students in class, by the way. you actually want to come to class and learn, which is really refreshing! don't be afraid to ask questions -- there'll at least be a handful of students who appreciate what you have to say, and the professor will shed tears knowing at least one person is really listening. :)

the founders limited copyright to provide income for the person who originally produced a work and then wanted that work/the ideas therein to be available to the public - to "enlighten" people rather than keep information from them by restraining who could print and sell a work.

now we're in a time that copyright goes on and on because the ideas are more readily available while income from them is not.

the majority of students don't do original work. So they need to know how to attribute work to other people. that's pretty simple.

when I was a student, my work was quoted by a professor in her academic work. she'd been nominated for a nat'l book award, is an internationally recognized scholar - but she credited me - even tho I was an undergraduate with an unpublished paper.

this was important. She was acknowledging my WORK, the time I put into research and thinking about a topic. she had far more credibility than me and could have just pretended she had come up with something but she didn't - because she has ethics.

What you call "academic neurosis" is what others call integrity.

I generally have no idea where the voices in my head are coming from.

If you must attribute anything to me then it's up to you to do the research that justifies your attribution. I'm fairly certain my most original thoughts arise in pink laser beams from space in a Philip K. Dick sort of way.

There are a few pathetic intellectual creations I am reasonably certain are mine enough to claim -- photographs, art, code snippets, etc. -- and those maybe I'll slap some sort of Creative Commons or GPL notice on, mostly because I'd rather it become part of the intellectual aethersphere and not be chained down and confined to some commercial hell, enslaved to an undead corporation.

Sharing is good. I wish we had an economic system that encouraged it. For every JK Rowling there are a million, perhaps a billion, starving artists.

Interesting discussion. I just completed my doctorate in Health Psychology and while undergoing the process discovered levels of plagiarism that most people never knew existed such as self-plagiarism. My university used an online service that scans student papers, including dissertations, for plagiarism. This service generates an "originality report" based on items in their database. The database is vast. It contains books, journal articles, newspaper articles and any other articles or papers that have ever been turned in for scanning.

When my papers were submitted, I would get a report that included flags for duplication of phrases I had used in previous papers. Phrases like "airplanes flying into buildings" were flagged. It did not flag common usage phrases like statistical formulations. However it was close. My dissertation required that my originality score be less than 10%. My document was 172 pages long and I was well below 10%. However, I did find that plagiarism is taken very seriously in academia and that the computer scanning services are very sensitive.

Your thoughtful remarks are most appreciated.

Thank you for the warm welcome :-)

Linda

I had to grovel to get mine. I think it's common for professors to dump all over students, including PhD candidates, in a variety of ways. But I was confident that none of them would steal my ideas. And they didn't. I think the academy has the lowest tolerance for plagiarism of any institution in our culture.

In industry, by way of contrast, it is commonplace for a manager to take credit for the work of a subordinate. This is done deliberately, and there is no chance that the manager will even be criticized, let alone punished. Instead, he or she is praised for "leadership". But that would be a topic for another thread.

I once dropped out of a class because of the requirement to run assignments through one of those online services (Turnitin). I objected to that requirement for the same reason that I object to random brake tests and sobriety tests by the California Highway Patrol: nobody should have to prove innocence without a reasonable prior suspicion of guilt. But that would be a topic for yet another thread.

Thanks for the warm welcome and the congrats :-)

Turnitin is the online service I was talking about. I was amazed to find that I was cited for my own work that I had turned in for previous classes. The obscurity of the references was mind boggling. I was also struck dumb by the common terms that were considered to be worthy of citation. I only dropped one course because of an instructor who seemed to think she was teaching middle school students and not doctoral candidates. She was very patronizing.

Sorry you had to grovel. Fortunately I did not. I have become quite chummy with my chair and several other faculty members. We definitely have a future together as friends and colleagues.

Linda

It may be unintentional, though there would be reason to doubt that as well, since the author of the second passage put "woefully inadequate" in quotes, thereby acknowledging that it came verbatim from the original source.

It's possible, I think, but hardly goes without saying that a writer who recognized that "woefully inadequate" called for direct quotes when copied directly would feel it's no big deal to include "support themselves and their children adequately" or "the assumption that mothers stay home with children" would not require quotes.

I don't think this example approaches "the use of a short phrase (which could easily have been thought up independently)."

both because of length and because there was a citation.

In other words, I agree with the last line of your post.

a quick lesson on documentation and a do-over would be appropriate here.

Intentionality is also part of plagiarism... It is clear that the student in the example wanted to give proper credit.

Students don't automatically pop out of the womb with an APA or MLA guide hard-wired into their brain.

It seems probable (but not obvious) to me that the student wanted to give proper credit. I would give the student the benefit of the doubt. A draconian punishment would be unwarranted, in my humble opinion.

It is what we call in the trade: a teachable moment.

This would be seen as a teachable moment by most instructors at most schools, but see post number 16 for an exception.

So the singers and writers can be seen in them.

I also find that with different views of context they can mean much more then only one story and find that really interesting also.

I will say this, some times I have typed something and later found out someone else also said the same thing, but I had never heard or read it. I think that can be correlation without causation, and have seen that effect in many places. I think many times truths, or ideas that make sense can be thought by many people, since really truth is not that complicated, and much of the complications in some thoughts are to create secrecy.

You could probably find 100s of writers that spoke of the golden rule, why, because it makes sense and is easy to think of, I think that is how many things work.

It is possible I have had an original thought, and I don't mind anyone repeating that, unless they use it for an opposite reason without commenting on where they got it, then that pisses me off, and I have seen that also, but that could be reverse correlation without causation.

So I think alot about the topic of plagiarism. Since I don't read books anymore (long story) and only have a basic knowledge of academic teachings, not really possible for me to plagiarize, but would always try to give credit to people that put effort and thought into sharing their skills like story writers and singers.

is no different than asking for medical advice. This is an internet bulletin board. If there's a specific situation that's arisen to prompt this question, there are attorneys who specialize in intellectual property law. It seems that the time taken to hash this topic on a bulletin board could have been answered with a short legal consultation.

Friends and family of mine have published music, journal articles, books, poetry and dissertations. Several are also college professors. This is very serious to them. It's their livelihood.

"The act of appropriating the literary composition of another author, or excerpts, ideas, or passages therefrom, and passing the material off as one's own creation."


http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Plagerism

I remember songwriters and authors being sued for just an idea or minor similarities, and won their cases based on plagiarism. The cases of students versus those creative types such as authors, song writers, poets etc., is different as using a story/concept/phrase etc. would fall under the plagiarism umbrella.

Students slightly rewording text they find and passing it off as their own definitely is. But of course each instance would have to be evaluated on its own merits and a wide brush doesn't apply for these things.

Interesting topic though.

But the student writer is probably ignorant, not purposeful. They would get a stern lecture from me on the proper citation methodology. Had I repeatedly demonstrated proper cite methods, they would be punished a letter grade. Sometimes students just don't follow directions.

That's pretty lenient compared to what could happen at some schools (post #16).

But I think your approach is better.

The threat of a more severe punishment (as practiced at some schools) might concentrate the student's mind wonderfully (1), but I wouldn't count on it.

-----------------------

(1) Must I mention Samuel Johnson here?

Of the replies to the OP concerning the hypothetical student example ...

9 say it's plagiarism;

4 say it's not plagiarism.

The naysayers took an early lead but then were overwhelmed by a tide of ayes.