I know we've discussed plagiarism here before and apparently it is on the rise. In the Chicago area at one school both the principal and the valedictorian have admitted to plagiarism. The school has taken a strong stance on these situations, as well they should.

We see it in speeches, in academic work, and on the Internet. As I said in my Blog entry today, I think many writers see plagiarism merely as not citing quotations. Yet, writing about others' ideas that were generated from their searching the literature and synthesizing the results should certainly be cited.

I was reading Bierma's article about mosey, and he cited Quinion so I read that. Yes, Bierma did cite Quinion once, I agree. However, until I read Quinion, I had thought all the ideas were Bierma's. Not the case. Most of his ideas came from Quinion. What do you think? Is this plagiarism?

[edited for typo]

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kalleh,

It doesn't seem like plagiarism to me. He cites the OED, which he may in fact have looked at first. So does Quinion. Both cite other sources which the other does not. Bierma goes through some of the proposed etymologies. He could have added a sentence to that effect, which would have made it clear that he's simply reviewing the previous research. He doesn't really offer an etymology of his own. Also, it's a short piece in a newspaper not an article in a reviewed journal. The editors of the former tend to cut copy to make it fit, and the latter tend to worry about things like attribution and proper citation.

As zmj says, it doesn't look like plagiarism. As well as Michael Quinion, he also mentions Anatoly Liberman's book (which probably caused him to write the article in the first place), which wasn't published when Quinion wrote his article.

Also, as mentioned, newspapers and other popular media tend to be less fussy about giving full attribution to sources than academia.

I think I'd have preferred, at least in the Web version, for the article to contain proper links to Quinion's article and perhaps the Amazon or some other review of Liberman's book. That, though, seems to be more the fault of the Tribune than Bierma; I've noticed a similar lack of external links in their other online articles.

I do realize that I am a stickler about citing others' works, so I was probably being too hard on him. Thanks for your opinions.