“Rewording”

A surprising number of college students are devoted to what they call “rewording”: the practice of taking a passage from someone else’s writing and, uh, rewording it, without attribution. More surprising is that many such students see nothing wrong with this practice. More surprising still is that some of their professors see nothing wrong with it either and even encourage it. I suspect that the Dunning-Kruger effect is at work here: such professors must lack the competence to understand that what they’re encouraging is in fact plagiarism.

There are many authoritative explanations in print of paraphrase, plagiarism, and the inappropriateness of rewording without attribution. Here’s an excerpt from a helpful online explanation, from the Writing Center at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill:

What About Paraphrasing?

Paraphrasing means taking another person’s ideas and putting those ideas in your own words. Paraphrasing does NOT mean changing a word or two in someone else’s sentence, changing the sentence structure while maintaining the original words, or changing a few words to synonyms. If you are tempted to rearrange a sentence in any of these ways, you are writing too close to the original. That’s plagiarizing, not paraphrasing.

Paraphrasing is a fine way to use another person’s ideas to support your argument as long as you attribute the material to the author and cite the source in the text at the end of the sentence. In order to make sure you are paraphrasing in the first place, take notes from your reading with the book closed. Doing so will make it easier to put the ideas in your own words. When you are unsure if you are writing too close to the original, check with your instructor BEFORE you turn in the paper for a grade. So, just to be clear—do you need to cite when you paraphrase? Yes, you do!

Plagiarism (The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

When I talk with students about these matters, I always point out that no matter what they’ve been told, “rewording” without attribution is plagiarism, though perhaps in a hapless and unsophisticated form. Imagine getting an F for a paper or a course without even realizing that you’re engaging in academic misconduct. That’s the Dunning-Kruger effect with a vengeance. Yipes.

Related posts
“Local Norms” and “‘organic’ attribution” (writing without quotation marks)
Old and unimproved (“How to e-mail a professor,” “reworded”)

[My knowledge of “rewording” comes from many conversations over many years with students who have studied in many different institutions. My syllabi and other course materials make clear that “rewording” is a no-no.]

VDP on time

Van Dyke Parks, from the stage in Santa Barbara last week:

“Time is our only common enemy; the rest of it is just bar talk on a sinking Titanic.”

Domestic aspirations

As heard on Modern Family, Cameron Tucker (Eric Stonestreet) speaking:

“You know, I just wanna be home, reading on opposite ends of the sofa.”

[That’s how I feel today. Elaine, are you with me?]

“People are getting rid of bookshelves”

J. L. Sathre:

1. People are getting rid of bookshelves. Treat the money you budgeted for shelving as found money. Go to garage sales and cruise the curbs.

2. While you’re drafting that business plan, cut your projected profits in half. People are getting rid of bookshelves.

25 Things I Learned From Opening a Bookstore (Open Salon, found via Coudal)

Barthes on pens

Roland Barthes on writing as ritual:

Take the gesture, the action of writing. I would say, for example, that I have an almost obsessive relation to writing instruments. I often switch from one pen to another just for the pleasure of it. I try out new ones. I have far too many pens — I don’t know what to do with all of them! And yet, as soon as I see a new one, I start craving it. I cannot keep myself from buying them.

When felt-tipped pens first appeared in the stores, I bought a lot of them. (The fact that they were originally from Japan was not, I admit, displeasing to me.) Since then I’ve gotten tired of them, because the point flattens out too quickly. I’ve also used pen nibs — not the “Sergeant-Major,” which is too dry, but softer nibs, like the “J.” In short, I’ve tried everything . . . except Bics, with which I feel absolutely no affinity. I would even say, a bit nastily, that there is a “Bic style,” which is really just for churning out copy, writing that merely transcribes thought.

In the end, I always return to fine fountain pens. The essential thing is that they can produce that soft, smooth writing I absolutely require.

“An Almost Obsessive Relation to Writing Instruments.” From a 1973 interview with Jean-Louis de Rambures. In Barthes’s The Grain of the Voice: Interviews, 1962–1980, translated by Linda Coverdale (New York: Hill and Wang, 1985).

Barthes writes about felt-tipped pens in the essay “Stationery Store”:

The felt-tipped pen, of Japanese origin, has taken up where the brush leaves off: this stylo is not an improvement of the point, itself a product of the pen (of steel or of cartilage); its immediate ancestry is that of the ideogram.

Empire of Signs, translated by Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982).

There are many photographs of Barthes with a cigarette in hand, but none that I can find in which he holds a pen. The New Yorker though has some samples of his handwriting.

Related posts
Five pens (reveries)
R. Crumb’s supplies (steel nibs, Pelikan ink, Strathmore paper)
Nabokov’s supplies (pencils, index cards)
Proust, Barthes, involuntary memory
Proust’s supplies (a Sergeant-Major fan)

This is not your song

Republican strategist Steve Schmidt:

“When you think about every iconic song that has emotional resonance for millions and millions of Americans, in almost every instance, Republican candidates can’t use the song because the artist is not supportive.”

G.O.P. Candidates Are Told, Don’t Use the Verses, It’s Not Your Song (New York Times)

Caution: the article includes a photograph of Survivor, c. 1979. What were people thinking back then?

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies

[Click for a larger, more 1955ish view.]

From Michel Hazanavicius, director of The Artist, OSS 117: Le Caire, nid d’espions [OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies] (2006) is a smart and funny secret-agent spoof, with beautiful and dangerous women, international villains, and brilliant cinematography and special effects. Jean Dujardin seems to be channeling Cary Grant and Sean Connery (out of character, he resembles neither). His OSS 117 is charming, dim, self-satisfied, yet remarkably capable. Bérénice Bejo’s Larmina though is much, much smarter. As with The Artist, cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman shows himself to be an ace at capturing older styles of moviemaking. I love the period-perfect color and cheap projected background in the scene above.

Speaking of Cary Grant, I wonder how many viewers will recognize the Grant–Randolph Scott element in the flashbacks to 117’s relationship with Jack Jefferson (Philippe Lefebvre).

[Jack and 117, hitting a ball back and forth. Click for a larger view.]

Related posts
The Artist (and typography)
EXchange names on screen (Cary Grant and Randolph Scott)
Jean Dujardin Sings (Elaine’s post on 117’s performance of “Bambino”)

xkcd: “Wrong Superhero”

[xkcd, February 3, 2012.]

From the Life Photo Archive

[“534-Stephens College.” Photograph by Nina Leen. From the Life Photo Archive. Click for a larger view.]

Wikipedia reports that Stephens College is “a women’s college located in Columbia, Missouri.” I have David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest on my mind — thinking about the novel’s many masks (figurative and literal, some worn while engaging in “video telephony”) led me, idly browsing, to this photograph.

The record store as public good

Leon Wieseltier on Amazon and the closing of Washington, D.C.’s Melody Record Shop:

How easy must every little thing be? A record store in your neighborhood is also convenient, and so is a bookstore. There is also a sinister side to the convenience of online shopping: hours once spent in the sensory world, in the diversified satisfaction of material needs and desires, can now be surrendered to work. It appears to be a law of American life that there shall be no respite from screens. And so Amazon’s practices raise the old question of the cultural consequences of market piggishness. For there are businesses that are not only businesses, that also have non-monetary reasons for being, that are public goods. Their devastation in the name of profit may be economically legitimate, but it is culturally calamitous. In a word, wrong.

Going to Melody (The New Republic, found via Music Clip of the Day, where you can read more)

Record stores I have known
Relic Rack, Sam Goody’s, J&R
Record Service