I pity today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s comma chasers. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re (we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re) the ones whose job is tantamount to digging a dozen 6-by-6-by-6 holes with a dull shovel in the hot Fort Bliss sun, in August.<\/p>\n
But first, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s make it clear that: The term comma chaser doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t refer solely to that tiny punctuation mark but is a generic term for editors and teachers, and even parents who look over their kids\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 homework.<\/p>\n
And while on this subject, let me stress that every person who checks submitted work for spelling, punctuation (not just commas), apostrophes (especially), and content already has a place reserved in the Great Hereafter. That doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t necessarily mean Heaven will be populated only with erstwhile English teachers and newspaper people who ask, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153To WHOM do you refer?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d instead of the lazier \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Who do you refer to?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Winston Churchill, tired of hearing, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Never end a sentence with a preposition,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is credited with having answered, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This is the kind of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nAnd yet, a number of authoritative sources either fail to credit Churchill, or else insist the quotation is mangled.<\/p>\n
But let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s get back to Heaven. I believe that people who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t necessarily teach language but who still try to remediate serious grammar and usage errors ought to get the fast track to paradise. Why? Because they have already spent their hell on earth.<\/p>\n
I discovered early in my years of teaching English and journalism that few other teachers seemed to care. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s YOUR job to make sure they spell correctly,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was what we heard.<\/p>\n
Whoever sponsors a school newspaper will forever be held accountable to anything that even comes close to an error. Although I appreciate people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reminding me of typotrocities (typo + atrocity), I keep thinking, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it be great if the bearers of red pens were able to catch my errors before they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re printed?<\/p>\n
Now, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s delve into another chore of language teachers: Writing a term paper. Let me cite a few egregious cases of abuse of the language, this time focusing mainly on the word that every American has heard dozens of times, ever since Melania Trump took the stage at the Republican convention. You will recall that plagiarism (defined as literary theft) is simply the use of other people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s words and phrases and claiming them as their own.<\/p>\n
Melania\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s name became a household word after her brief address at the GOP convention, an address that made people ask, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hmmm. Where\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard those words before?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In an age of instant retrieval of information, it took no time for Democrats to charge that Melania had lifted pieces of an earlier speech by First Lady Michelle Obama.<\/p>\n
And did pundits have fun with that bit of information! Stephen Colbert\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s late night program featured a Melania look-alike quoting passages credited to famous people through the ages. One spoof had Melania beginning her speech with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Fourscore and seven years ago\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and inserting lines from \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A Tale of Two Cities\u00e2\u20ac\u009d: \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcIt was the best of times; it was the worst of times.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Editorial cartoonists embellished the purloined words even further, using excerpts like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I had a dream\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ask not what your country . . .\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
With proper attribution and moderation, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s acceptable to use others\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 words, but to use them profusely and without attribution is just plain unethical.<\/p>\n
But to be fair, I believe that many people, especially school kids, never really learned the \u00e2\u20ac\u201d confusing \u00e2\u20ac\u201d rules about plagiarism. Some believe that making the SLIGHTEST change in someone else\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work gets them off the hook.<\/p>\n
For example, a school teacher once asked a fellow language arts teacher and me to go over and rank student compositions in order to give awards at the end-of-school assembly. The first essay we read was titled simply \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Argentina.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The writing seemed oh-so-smooth, and we were able to locate the EXACT words and phrases in a set of old encyclopedias in the school library.<\/p>\n
Soon we discovered that the student\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s next set of Argentinian facts came directly from yet a different set of reference books. It became obvious that the student had simply used three different encyclopedias, looked up \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Argentina,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and copied the material word for word.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that the way research papers are SUPPOSED to be written?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the social studies teacher asked. Apparently the well-meaning but confused teacher had been taught \u00e2\u20ac\u201d possibly in his own high school \u00e2\u20ac\u201d to copy, but never from just one source.<\/p>\n
We can blame some of the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s problems with research on youngsters\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 naivete. But what happens when we receive at the Optic multiple copies of the identical content?<\/p>\n
A few months ago, the Optic\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s email contained a lengthy column purportedly written by a state official. Interesting, but, waaaiiittt a minute! We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d received an identical copy of that opinion piece the day before, plus one more a few days later. These were all from different submitters.<\/p>\n
What are the chances that three brilliant writer-politicians can come up with three identical opinion pieces? Because one of the writers had included her return address, I sent her an email in which I mentioned that THREE copies of the SAME opinion piece hardly qualify as original work. The response was simply that she had attached the unattributed work for my enjoyment and for my eyes only.<\/p>\n
Interesting, flattering and even enjoyable, but it was also plagiarized.<\/p>\n
The Internet has made it easy for people to lift whole passages written by someone else, paste them on their own laptop and try to get away with palming off someone else\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s words. The other side of that blade is the ease with which plagiarized stuff can be rooted out.<\/p>\n
Try it. Copy a block of text and paste it to a search engine like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Google\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Firefox.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In seconds you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re likely to discover the author of those words.<\/p>\n
You might even learn that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I came to bury Caesar, not to praise him\u00e2\u20ac\u009d came from Shakespeare \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and not an aspiring politician who simply came across a group of words and claimed them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I pity today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s comma chasers. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re (we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re) the ones whose job is tantamount to digging a dozen 6-by-6-by-6 holes with a dull shovel in the hot Fort Bliss sun, in August. But first, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s make it clear that: The term comma chaser doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t refer solely to that tiny punctuation mark but is a generic term […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1686"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1687,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions\/1687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}