Mods, please move this if it's not in the appropriate place. I often go back and forth about which forum to post something in and am often wrong, ha. I put it here because it's currently in the news.
This plagiarism thing involving Melania Trump is bringing back bad memories. Twice in my career I had to deal with plagiarists. The second time was the worst. It happened post-PTSD onset, near the end of my career, and I was also trying to deal with overwhelming betrayal, abuse, etc. issues from my past. Plagiarism is a form of betrayal, of lying. (To add to my situation, one of my best friends, who was also a colleague, was struggling with cancer at the time. She died during my last month on the job.)
I discovered the plagiarism through checking on research the writer did because a few things in her work didn't ring right or weren't clear enough or any number of reasons. I doublechecked and triple checked her writing against her sources after I noticed some of the prose was the same. I was then instructed to look for more instances and found more, a lot more. I felt insulted. I felt embarrassed for her. I felt disgusted at the apparent lack of integrity. I felt sick to my stomach because I knew I had to tell my boss and that then I would be the one who would have to talk to her about it. That was one of the worst work experiences in my career. Having to say to another writer, umm, you wrote x, y, and z, and so did this other writer, or these other writers, in the same words, and umm, not only is that unacceptable, it's illegal. It's wrenching. I thought of how horrified I would feel if I'd done that. In fact, I kind of did feel horrified as I think most conscientious writers feel when confronted with this. Plagiarism can happen accidentally on the rare occasion (if you don't have a good system for keeping your writing separate from the words of other writers whose work you are consulting), but not nearly as often and as consistently as this particular writer did it. And most professional writers do have their own systems for avoiding doing this even accidentally.
I feel what journalists and former speechwriters are expressing on the news. When writers hear of this, we tend to feel it in our guts because we know intimately how much work it takes to research something, then write something new in our own words that will add to common knowledge. (George Orwell compared writing a book to suffering from a long illness.)
Plagiarism is, of course, not as bad as starting a war or anything, but it does speak to integrity, the level of respect one has for the fundamental right to own our own creative efforts, and the ability to make amends when you screw up.
This plagiarism thing involving Melania Trump is bringing back bad memories. Twice in my career I had to deal with plagiarists. The second time was the worst. It happened post-PTSD onset, near the end of my career, and I was also trying to deal with overwhelming betrayal, abuse, etc. issues from my past. Plagiarism is a form of betrayal, of lying. (To add to my situation, one of my best friends, who was also a colleague, was struggling with cancer at the time. She died during my last month on the job.)
I discovered the plagiarism through checking on research the writer did because a few things in her work didn't ring right or weren't clear enough or any number of reasons. I doublechecked and triple checked her writing against her sources after I noticed some of the prose was the same. I was then instructed to look for more instances and found more, a lot more. I felt insulted. I felt embarrassed for her. I felt disgusted at the apparent lack of integrity. I felt sick to my stomach because I knew I had to tell my boss and that then I would be the one who would have to talk to her about it. That was one of the worst work experiences in my career. Having to say to another writer, umm, you wrote x, y, and z, and so did this other writer, or these other writers, in the same words, and umm, not only is that unacceptable, it's illegal. It's wrenching. I thought of how horrified I would feel if I'd done that. In fact, I kind of did feel horrified as I think most conscientious writers feel when confronted with this. Plagiarism can happen accidentally on the rare occasion (if you don't have a good system for keeping your writing separate from the words of other writers whose work you are consulting), but not nearly as often and as consistently as this particular writer did it. And most professional writers do have their own systems for avoiding doing this even accidentally.
I feel what journalists and former speechwriters are expressing on the news. When writers hear of this, we tend to feel it in our guts because we know intimately how much work it takes to research something, then write something new in our own words that will add to common knowledge. (George Orwell compared writing a book to suffering from a long illness.)
Plagiarism is, of course, not as bad as starting a war or anything, but it does speak to integrity, the level of respect one has for the fundamental right to own our own creative efforts, and the ability to make amends when you screw up.
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