Ramblings-n-Writings

Archive for March 1st, 2010

Do you have pet peeves? I suppose I do. If you asked me to name them, I probably couldn’t. I don’t think about them very often so I usually forget them until I see one in action.

I found one in action today. In fact, I didn’t realize this was a pet peeve until just now.

What’s my new pet peeve?

Ah, I’m so glad you asked.

Plagiarism.

You know, the copying of other people’s words and claiming them as your own. It’s that thing you could get into big trouble for if you did it on an English paper in high school.

How did I develop my detest of plagiarism? I do a lot of fact-finding and/or research online. Nothing frustrates me more than reading the same information with the exact same wording on 10 different websites.

If you’re going to copy the Wikipedia information and make it a blog post, at least attribute the information as coming from Wikipedia.

Or better yet, find the basic facts about your topic and create your own sentences with those facts!

Ranking slightly higher on my list of pet peeves are people who claim to be “professional” writers with 15 years of experience who copied verbatim from another website. Of course, I can’t prove who copied whom, but touting yourself as a writer and not paying attention if someone was copying your work online doesn’t reflect very well on you. Ten different websites with the exact same copy makes me wonder who the writer really is.

If you claim to be a writer, prove it. Develop your own writing style so people recognize the difference between your writing and what you copied from someone else.

Personally, I think plagiarists should lose a finger every time they plagiarize.

Oh, and if you are ever in my presence while I’m taking a nap, don’t … under any circumstance … open the potato chip bag. It makes the most horrid crinkly noises and I detest waking up to the sound of someone reaching into the bag.

Disclaimer: No potato chip bags or plagiarists were harmed in the creation of this post.