The soon-to-be-defunct New York Times hyperventilates: "many students simply do not grasp that using words they did not write is a serious misdeed." No discussion, naturally, of what makes it such a serious misdeed... namely, nothing!
Even though there are millions more words in the English language than any other on Earth, I think it is insane to think that everyone who wants to say the same thing about a particular subject ought to be able to come up with completely different words to use in order to convey that thought. Sooner or later, it will already have been said in such a way to have completely distilled what you want to say, therefore making further efforts to say it any other way shoddy by comparison.
Not *millions* ...but thousands more, yes. Particularly because English is so readily capable of assimilating words from other languages. I'm not quite sure about the assertion that many thoughts have a sort of "golden precision phrase," by which they are expressed better than by any other. (I am sure that that last sentence could be better phrased, though.) It reminds me of the notion that, given the finite number of tones and usable rhythms, eventually we will run out of melodies to create. Such a catastrophe has yet to appear on the horizon. But the rules of intellectual property - to return to the main topic - are indeed utterly arbitrary, and their application to writing, e.g., "plagiarism," is no exception. How many common words in a row are too many? And how can there possibly be a rule about such a thing, enforceable by Law, in fact, which applies to every piece of writing, past, present and future??
Even though there are millions more words in the English language than any other on Earth, I think it is insane to think that everyone who wants to say the same thing about a particular subject ought to be able to come up with completely different words to use in order to convey that thought. Sooner or later, it will already have been said in such a way to have completely distilled what you want to say, therefore making further efforts to say it any other way shoddy by comparison.
ReplyDeleteNot *millions* ...but thousands more, yes. Particularly because English is so readily capable of assimilating words from other languages. I'm not quite sure about the assertion that many thoughts have a sort of "golden precision phrase," by which they are expressed better than by any other. (I am sure that that last sentence could be better phrased, though.) It reminds me of the notion that, given the finite number of tones and usable rhythms, eventually we will run out of melodies to create. Such a catastrophe has yet to appear on the horizon. But the rules of intellectual property - to return to the main topic - are indeed utterly arbitrary, and their application to writing, e.g., "plagiarism," is no exception. How many common words in a row are too many? And how can there possibly be a rule about such a thing, enforceable by Law, in fact, which applies to every piece of writing, past, present and future??
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