Paraphrasing and Plagiarism

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Thinking Mother has a nice post on plagiarism. I've been reading a book written to classroom teachers about handling plagiarism in the classroom. One of the things I noted in both the blog and the original article on plagiarism was the focus on blatant copying. This is something that is pretty easy to teach. Don't copy. Yes, even if you change a few words, it's still copying.

But there's no mention in either article of what I suspect is a much more common form of plagiarism. In fact one of the comments following the blog describes a writing program that trains students to paraphrase. I may be misreading the writer's intent, but it seems her point is that if students learn to paraphrase then they won't plagiarise. Unfortunately paraphrasing another writer's work without citing your source is plagiarism as well (see here, here, or here).

The difficulty is determining what information is common knowledge and not original to any author which won't need a citation. For instance a biography of Lincoln would likely not cite a source for his wife being Mary Todd Lincoln, but would cite a source describing their first meeting.

The Thinking Mom includes a great example of why this kind of citation is so important not just to avoid plagiarism, but also to prove your case:

To make matters worse for me as a student in fourth grade, when I wrote in my report that the tomato was both a fruit and a vegetable the teacher marked it wrong, chastised me in red ink saying that it was NOT a fruit and lowered my grade. 1

While I'm sure that a footnote wouldn't have made a difference for some readers, it's possible that a footnote for this fact might have convinced her teacher to check this point (although I'll be quick to admit I'm not sure a tomato being a fruit is really a fact that needs a source).

I've read academic books where a long list had every single item footnoted not with just one source but many.

I'm not sure I understood this point about footnotes until I began to seriously read academic writing frequently enough to be exposed to meticulous footnotes (and some pretty sad ones too).

Total Depravity

Anyone familiar with Calvinism will recognize this as the first point of the "TULIP."

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In my study of history, I learned that Calvin and Luther agreed on many points and it wasn't until the century after Luther's death that Lutherans separated themselves from what would become Reformed Theology.

Witness this observation of Martin Luther in his commentary on Galatians, " Furthermore, we are all subject to the devil both in body and goods, and we be strangers in this world, whereof he is prince and god. Therefore the bread we eat, the liquids we drink, the garments we wear, yea, the air, and whatsoever we live by in the flesh, is under his dominion."

Swine

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As I read more works by original authors, I become aware that contemporary belief in a time when debate was more mannered and orderly is a myth. Take this little insult from Martin Luther's commentary on the Galatians, "So that these swine do think that righteousness is but a moral thing, only beholding the visor, or outward show of the work, and not the heart of him that doth the work: . . . ."

Insubordination

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General Braxton Bragg was not well liked by his troops. During an invasion of Kentucky he was in part on a propaganda mission to sway sympathetic Kentuckians to join the Confederate Army. As such he had to have his troops be orderly and not forage for supplies (which Lee's men had been able to do in his two northern raids). When a soldier snuck into a yard and stole three apples, he court martialed that soldier and had him executed.

So it's not surprising that his men had little good to say of him.

Many southern armies were ill supplied with uniforms so at one time Bragg stopped a man to find out if he was in his army. The man, asked if he was part of Bragg's army and not recognizing Bragg, replied, "Bragg's army? Bragg's got no army. He shot half of them himself, up in Kentucky, and the other half got killed at Murfreesboro." (How the North Won, page 354)

Late in his tenure as a field general he became suspicious of reports about a Federal retreat and ask a soldier, "Do you know what a retreat looks like?" The soldier replied, "I ought to know, General, I've been with you during your whole campaign." (How the North Won, page 454)

Hand in the air, delayed long, and naked in the snow

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Imagine for a moment a highly respected general. A man known for his serious demeanor and yet at the same time his quick tactical skill set. A man who was known for his piety.
So as you read about this man would you expect so many quirks and foibles from him as I’ve found.

So let’s begin with that hand which got shot twice during the war. Once in the first battle of Manassas and once in the wilderness which eventually led to his death. There were many opinions on why he held his hand up during battle, but he claimed that it was to establish balance in his body which he felt was out of equilibrium. Eventually he suffered a wound that leads to his death, once again in that hand.

Later during the seven days battle in Virginia he repeatedly delayed entering the battle and follow Lee’s plan to bottle up the union army. This happened not on just one day but several days running. It was thought he might have been in prayer.

Finally when the South had crushed the North at Marye’s Heights he proposed to pursue the North and charge them while they were demoralized and in retreat. Since it was night he proposed to Lee to strip naked so that they could recognize each other in the dark.

I suppose that some folk might think I’ve written this post to somehow redeem the men of my fine state who shot Stonewall Jackson by mistake during that battle in the wilderness.

Once again I find myself puzzled by action of military men that I can’t imagine modern military leaders taking.

Civil War Characters

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One of the things I’ve discovered in reading about the Civil War is how many unique personalities there were involved in the war. Many of these personalities were leaders: politicians, generals, and others. It’s also interesting to note in regards to that how small their world was and how much they knew of each other.

As I’ve read what they’ve said about themselves and others and their actions, I often find myself puzzling over whether similar modern leaders would do such things, would be so candid, would undermine rivals to the point of jeopardizing the war effort. I can’t imagine it, but maybe I just haven’t read enough about war.

Finally, I’ve also noticed that the regular army members were not as respectful of their leaders as we would expect regular army members to be today. I’ve already written about Nelly but there are many other instances where a general doesn’t seem to get the respectful demour I would expect in today’s army.

No Shills

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Shill: A shill is an associate of a person selling goods or services or a political group, who pretends no association to the seller/group and assumes the air of an enthusiastic customer. The intention of the shill is, using crowd psychology, to encourage others unaware of the set-up to purchase said goods or services or support the political group's ideological claims. Shills are often employed by confidence artists. The term plant is also used. 1

Recently I heard a piece on NPR about "mom bloggers" and "blog-ola" or "pay-ola." It appear NPR picked this up from a similar piece at Business Week. Since I'm a mom and a blogger I felt the need to write something.

I spent some time reading mom blog reactions to this. There are many. I also spent some time looking a mom blog hubs that include articles on product recommendations.

I've faced this in the homeschool world where many curriculum companies offer parents who use their product the ability to be a sales representative for them using the materials they already own. Anyone who is interested is given a special code that will give the parent/rep credit for a sale if one takes place. This can be done face to face, but it can also be included in links from posts, emails, and blogs to the website of the curriculum company. No one who is not familiar with such practices would know that clicking such a link might represent money in the pocket of the person who recommended the product or provided the link.

In a large email group I run, we have a rule that such affiliations must be disclosed and I've lobbied at forums I've been a member of to have such ethics standards in place as well.

One of the astounding things to me in reading through many blogs in the past week is how comfortable many people are with this idea. How little they feel it needs to be made clear what is going on. What ambiguous turns of phrase might be used to describe a product they received free from a company. Certainly caveat emptor must be the watch word of many places.

I'm sure many of the people who only post positive reviews would be quite upset to spend money on a product only to find out that it has many faults that weren't given in a review because the reviewer felt obliged to only publish a positive review. No doubt the reviewer feels they liked some aspects, but didn't feel it was right to give the negatives and they really weren't that important anyway.

The other interesting thing I noted was many bloggers pointed out that some magazines and newspaper also do this in their pages (in newspaper this occurs mostly in the pages aimed at women). They are correct, but does that mean that this new media of blogging is just going to follow the example of the old media without thought?

In case anyone is wondering: first, I'm not even sure anyone is reading my blog, I'm pretty sure that not enough readers exist for anyone to ever offer me blog-ola, but if offered I'm going to turn it down. If I ever get to be a book reviewer (the only product I can see anyone offering to give me to review), I'll let you know very clearly that I've been given a book. But for now I have my doubts about anyone offering me anything.