The Plagiarism Problem

The Plagiarism Problem
A commenter posted an innocuous message a few minutes ago, but when I went to the commenter's URL, it advertised "undetectable and plagiarism-free" essays for sale. I zapped it as comment spam, but it also hit a sore spot. This semester I flunked four students and gave a D to a fifth, all because of plagiarized work. It was the worst outbreak I've seen in years, and after forty years...

A commenter posted an innocuous message a few minutes ago, but when I went to the commenter's URL, it advertised "undetectable and plagiarism-free" essays for sale. I zapped it as comment spam, but it also hit a sore spot.

This semester I flunked four students and gave a D to a fifth, all because of plagiarized work. It was the worst outbreak I've seen in years, and after forty years in the college teaching business I think I'm pretty good at spotting it. Probably not good enough, though: All these cases involved simple cut and paste from websites. All I had to do was type a typical sentence from an essay into Google Advanced Search, and bingo—the source was usually the first hit.

Back in the dim days of typewritten essays and print sources, this was what I called lazy plagiarism: transcribing almost random chunks from easily accessed published sources. Smarter plagiarists went to the trouble of finding more obscure sources. I'm sure their descendants are using sources like my spammer's, or otherwise swiping stuff not easily found on the web.

I've even found a few folks who plagiarized my writing advice, presenting it as their own. Since this material is also available in different, copyrighted form in my book on writing SF and fantasy, my publisher always swings into action with highly intimidating emails that get the material removed very quickly indeed.

In some cases it's flattering to be quoted at length, as long as one's cited as the source, and plagiarism might be seen as the insincerest form of flattery. But it's clearly a major problem for educators, and no doubt for web writers and editors as well. So I'm curious to know if you've run into problems with people swiping your stuff—whether you've written it for your own purposes or for your client/employer. And where do you draw the line between common knowledge and intellectual property?

It should be a fascinating discussion, but I won't be able to take part in it until sometime late in the month: This afternoon my wife and I are off for Ottawa on a family visit. I won't have much computer access until I'm home, which is probably just as well...I hope to make some progress, in longhand, on my long-neglected novel.

Four Marketing Tips for Self-Publishers
You may have already noticed that self-publishing is very time consuming. Most of your time is spent on marketing and publicity and very little time on writing.

What Makes Good Webwriting?
A reader wrote the other day to ask my opinion: What did I consider good examples of writing on the web? Well, I confess I couldn't leap up with a dozen examples on the tip of my tongue. Examples of bad writing, however, are easy to come by. On my blog H5N1, I often excerpt text from news stories, government websites, and technical sources. All too often, I have to...

A reader wrote the other day to ask my opinion: What did I consider good examples of writing on the web?

Well, I confess I couldn't leap up with a dozen examples on the tip of my tongue. Examples of bad writing, however, are easy to come by. On my blog H5N1, I often excerpt text from news stories, government websites, and technical sources. All too often, I have to tinker with the text to make it readable.

For example, some scientific abstracts are solid blocks of text, 200 or 300 words long. I can't edit them, but I can re-paragraph them to make them easier to read.

News reports are often more reader-friendly, full of one-sentence paragraphs. The sentences, however, may run to 40 or more words—and it's often the first paragraph that tries to create an "abstract" of the whole story. (When I excerpt the text anyway, I usually apologize for the style.)

In other cases, the text may be concise and well-paragraphed, but appallingly displayed. Some poor souls are still stuck in 1996, proudly publishing white text sprawled across a black background clear across the screen.

Others have crisp black text on a white background. But the lines run to 15 or 20 words. Here's an example from Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, which is OK but could be much better with shorter lines. He hasn't changed his format in years, and he should have.

Subheads Help
Subheads can break up the text still more and provide landmarks. Too many webwriters neglect this simple aid to readers.

Of course, sometimes a text is on a website only to be printed off and read on paper. In that case, it just has to be readable when printed.

You're welcome to visit H5N1 and my other blogs to see how I try to live by my own rules.

Judge the Top Blogs on Their Writing!
But here's another suggestion. Visit Technorati: Popular Blogs and see what you think of the writing on some of the top sites.

Does Engadget's shimmering prose enshrine it as #1 blog? Is Michelle Malkin (#11)a better webwriter than Guy Kawasaki(#15)?

Or are other factors at work in these high-traffic, high-impact sites? I'd love to hear your comments.

Blogging is Publishing
I wish I could say that "blogging is publishing" was something that I came up with on my own, but that is not the case. However, I have been pondering on this phrase for a while and decided to write an entry on my thoughts.