Wexistence

I was an errant blogger in 2010 and last January I resolved to post more in 2011. It’s March and I’ve still got nothing.

My 2010 was a busy year: I got married, moved into a new condo, handled a lot of big projects. And then there were the holidays, which last two entire months in this country, and having a new additional family made them especially hectic. Early 2011 there was the 8th National Education Summit, and the (still ongoing) home improvement project, and then I was in Japan for two weeks for our honeymoon, and now I’m back and I need to catch up on a ton of backlog and have lost all hope of ever seeing the surface of my desk again…

…And I have come to terms with the fact that I will never have time to write and I should just suck it up and write anyway. I’m back, and I mean it this time!

On the front page today:

(Click to read full article)

See, I’m a big fan of Facebook/Twitter/the internet in general! Who says I don’t appreciate the power of new media?

As a former university instructor, plagiarism is a thorny issue with me. I’m no longer in the academe but plagiarism continues to plague me. It exists even in the blogosphere.

Lo and behold dangerousbeans’ post on William Esposo’s article on English as a medium of instruction which suspiciously sounds a lot like mine.

My post wasn’t even anything great but apparently this guy liked it so much that he tried to pass off my thoughts as his own. So lame.

As a teacher I referred my students to the University of Kentucky’s Plagiarism: Definitions, Examples and Penalties. An excerpt applicable to this particular case:

Example 3: Rewording a sentence (paraphrasing)

This is one of the most common mistakes that students make. You can not simply reword a sentence. This is best shown by example. Consider the following sentence from Angelici (Synthesis and Technique in Inorganic Chemistry, p 46):

“Those complexes that contain unpaired electrons are attracted into a magnetic field and are said to be paramagnetic, while those with no unpaired electrons are repelled by such a field and are called diamagnetic”

The following permutations are unacceptable changes in wording:

• “Complexes that contain unpaired electrons are those that are attracted to a magnetic field. These are called paramagnetic, while those with no unpaired electrons are repelled by a magnetic field and are said to be diamagnetic.”
• “Those complexes that contain paired electrons are repelled by a magnetic field and are said to be diamagnetic, whereas those with no paired electrons are attracted to such a field and are called paramagnetic.”
• “Compounds that have unpaired electrons are attracted to a magnetic field and are called paramagnetic. Compounds with no unpaired electrons are repelled by this field and are said to be diamagnetic.”

Yes, sometimes there is no good way to make the sentence substantially different and still convey the information with the same effectiveness. It is perhaps OK to do this once or twice in an assignment, but certainly no more than that. Remember, the wording must be your own! Express information in your own words.

You may not “intend” to plagiarize but neither ignorance nor negligence excuses you.