Dayhoff Soundtrack: Mark Liberman: Patchwriting

Thursday, February 04, 2016

Mark Liberman: Patchwriting - June 13, 2014 Language Log

Retrieved February 4, 2016 as a result of a discussion on Facebook among a number of writers about an article on Poynter: “Is it original? An editor’s guide to identifying plagiarism:” http://www.poynter.org/2014/is-it-original-an-editors-guide-to-identifying-plagiarism/269273/

I could have sworn that I heard the term, “patchwriting” many-many years ago, but Mark Liberman has traced it back to 1993…

According to Mr. Liberman, in a June 13, 2014 article, “Patchwriting,” published on the website, “Language Log,” “patchwriting has been around for a while.” Find the article here: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=12963

Mr. Liberman reports the origin of the term, “seems to be in Rebecca Moore Howard, ‘A plagiarism pentimento", [sic] Journal of teaching writing 1993…”

Now I do not know what I am talking about but that has never stopped me in the past. Mr. Liberman’s piece is a fascinating read for those of us who celebrate being OCD and getting lost in the weeds over such matters.

I especially appreciated the comments in which one commenter waxed poetically about Immanuel Kant’s use of language from the King James Version of the New Testament and whether or not Kant should have added quotation marks. No mention of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, but Mark Twain, Monty Python, and Shakespeare did post cameo appearances.

Read much more here: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=12963

“Christopher Ketcham ("The Troubling Case of Chris Hedges: Pulitzer winner. Lefty hero. Plagiarist.", TNR 6/12/2014) documents several cases of sentences and even paragraphs copied verbatim, as well as other cases of "patchwriting": [sic] June 13, 2014 @ 10:37 am · Filed by Mark Liberman under Language and the media

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