Oh, I pity today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s comma chasers. But first, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s make one thing clear. 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 take the time to 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.<\/p>\n
That doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t necessarily mean Heaven will be populated only with erstwhile English teachers asking, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153To whom do I owe this heavenly honor?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Or people like Winston Churchill, who became tired of hearing, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Never end a sentence with a preposition.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He answered, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This is the kind of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
No, Heaven should contain all the people who try to improve language \u00e2\u20ac\u201d any language. And while still on the subject, I believe that even people who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t teach language but who nevertheless remediate grammar and usage issues ought to get the fast track to paradise. Why? Because they (and we) have already spent our hell on earth.<\/p>\n
As a freshman at Highlands University, I thanked my music appreciation professor for making one of my assignments bleed red. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been careless and later told the teacher I knew better but hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t expected him to notice such trivial things as punctuation marks. Formalities addressed, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s now delve into another chore of language arts teachers: Writing a term paper.<\/p>\n
Let me share just a few egregious cases of abuse of the language, but this time I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m focusing mainly on the word that every American has heard dozens of times since Melania Trump took the stage in last week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Republican convention. You may recall that plagiarism, often called literary theft, is simply the use of other people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s words, phrases and ideas and claiming them as their own.<\/p>\n
Specifically, Melania Trump\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s name became a household word in light of her brief address at the GOP convention, an address that made many people say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hmmm. I wonder where I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard those words before.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
In today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s age of instant retrieval of information, it took no time for Democrats to charge that Melania had lifted whole chunks of a speech delivered by First Lady Michelle Obama, back in 2008. Even Melania\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s choice of whom to crib from is strange, as her and Michelle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s allegiances are poles apart.<\/p>\n
And did pundits ever have fun with that bit of information! Stephen Colbert\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s late night TV program featured a Melania look-alike quoting several passages previously uttered or written by famous people through the ages.<\/p>\n
One spoof had Melania beginning her speech with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Fourscore and seven years ago,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and also inserting the opening lines from A Tale of Two Cities: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
And editorial cartoonists embellished the purloined words even further, using excerpts like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I had a dream.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d With proper attribution, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s acceptable to use others\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 words in moderation, but to use them without giving credit to the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153owner\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the words is just plain unethical.<\/p>\n
One test of plagiarism \u00e2\u20ac\u201d which I consider w-a-y too stringent \u00e2\u20ac\u201d is the use of any three consecutive words of another without attribution. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unreasonable because, in a way, we can find strings of three groups of words we can use, as this sentence demonstrates.<\/p>\n
But in fairness, 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 us off the hook. A junior high 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.<\/p>\n
The first essay we read was titled simply \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Argentina.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The writing seemed oh-so-smooth. Too smooth, in fact, as we were able to locate the exact words and phrases in a set of old encyclopedias in the school library.<\/p>\n
Soon we moved our grading station to the library, where 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.<\/p>\n
We asked her teacher, who flipped the question: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that the way research papers are supposed to be written?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Apparently the well-meaning but confused teacher had been taught \u00e2\u20ac\u201d possibly at his own junior high school \u00e2\u20ac\u201d to copy, but never from just one source.<\/p>\n
Sure, we can blame all the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s research problems on youngsters\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 naivet\u00c3\u00a9. The Internet has made it easy for people to lift whole passages written by someone else, paste them on to their own computer and possibly get away with palming off someone else\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s words and calling them their own. The other side of that blade is the ease with which plagiarized stuff can be rooted out.<\/p>\n
Try it yourself. Copy a paragraph then paste it on to a computer search engine like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Google,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Safari\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Firefox.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In seconds you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re likely to discover the true author of those words.<\/p>\n
You might even learn that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I had a dream\u00e2\u20ac\u009d came from Martin Luther King \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and not an aspiring politician who simply came across a group of words, liked them and claimed them.<\/p>\n
And don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be too surprised if in the future, someone claims he or she authored constructions like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153To be or not to be\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Friends, Romans, Countrymen! Lend me your ears!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
I must have taken Melania\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s borrowed words to bed with me that night. The inspiration for this column must have come because \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I had a dream.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oh, I pity today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s comma chasers. But first, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s make one thing clear. 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 take the time to look over their kids\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 homework. And while on this subject, let me stress […]<\/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":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1528"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1529,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528\/revisions\/1529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}