When you’re lifting material to the extent that Steyn does, you need to say so. But of course, if he had made it clear how much was being lifted, the stylistic part of the article would have been pointless.

The whole business is made even worse by his crediting Pullum for one minor point. This, and the subsequent response make it clear that the misappropriation was deliberate, and that Steyn (correctly) judged that, among his fans, he would be able to get away with claiming that this was enough.

It’s that he copied the entire structure of an argument and its pattern of evidentiary support:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003145.html

A number of reasonable responces are still possible, but Sascha Solis is being willfully obtuse. All the relevant stuff is urled in the original post.

When someone has done analytical work or research that you draw on, you say so. A journalist would say “as X points out…” or “X observed that…” Ordinary English contains ample resources for acknowledging debts.

Ah, there’s the rub. Sascha doesn’t seem to see this at all.

Last year, I failed two students but did not report them because the incidents in question were not as egregious.

So yes, I not only believe in plagiarism but in taking strong measures to counter it.

I just don’t think Steyn plagiarized.

He has said he got the idea from a former editor who, as you can see from the link cited above, did indeed write about the missing definite article phenomenon pre-Steyn and post-Pullum.

Did the editor get the idea from Pullum? I have no idea and as I’ve said, it seems completely conceivable that they both could have come up with it independently. It is, after all, the opening sentence we’re talking about.

As for Steyn and the staggered sentence, well, it’s an obvious play on words. I see things like that happen fairly regularly and innocently.

Quite frankly I’m amazed at the “Yeah, I’d fail him” tone of the comments section over at Bitch PhD. I wouldn’t want to be called in to the Dean’s office on a case like this, which is essentially a case with NO evidence.

Once again, Steyn credited Pullum for naming the issue in question not for discovering it , which is fine by me because we don’t know Pullum did discover it.

What’s more, I’m still not clear on what everyone thinks STeyn should have done. Could I please have an example of what you would consider appropriate.

And what about that other commenter’s valid point about the differences between journalistic and academic practices?

Your remark about living in world where IP laywers rule our lives is absolutely right, but you fail to notice that neither Lieberman nor Quiggin suggested that lawyers get involved. Only Steyn’s assistant made that threat.

I notice that John Quiggin has now retracted his charge of plagiarism and that Antonia Zerbisias has also made clear she is not accusing Steyn of plagiarism.

So then, what exactly is it you are accusing Steyn of doing?

It seems to me you that want you really want is for Steyn to pay some sort of homage to Pullum as being the first person to notice that Dan Brown did away with definite articles. But how do we establish that Pullum was indeed the first to notice this “fact”?

The truth is we can’t and as I pointed out in my earlier comment, it seems to me entirely conceivable that linguists and newspaper books section editors were getting heated up about this little language issue even before Pullum opened his inflight copy of the Da Vinci code.

This is precisely why facts are not copyrightable.

And I don’t think any of us would really want to live in a world where they were and IP lawyers ruled our lives including the jokes we tell each other at dinner parties.

“I am not arguing with you – I am telling you.”
James Abbott McNeill Whistler * Propositions, 2

Oscar Wilde: “I wish I had said that”
Whistler: “You will, Oscar, you will.”
o L.C. Ingleby, Oscar Wilde (1907)

If you steal from Al Capone what he stole from the downtown bank, did you rob the bank?

But more seriously—you’re taking work that someone did finding cites, and you are (1) not crediting the person who did the actual work, and (2) not checking that it’s correct before stealing it. You’re not quoting from the original. You’re quoting from the person whose work you are copying.

Yes, maybe they did get it exactly correct. If you don’t check, you’ll never know unless someone calls you on it.

My experience is that more often than not secondary sources get their material slightly wrong, or leave out some material that changes the meaning.

You should get that sort of experience for yourself.

Surely not. If I cite the records of the Carcassone Inquisition in 1250 without giving credit to le Roy Ladurie where I found the material, that’s wrong, because I don’t have independent access to the records and I, and the reader, am relying on Ladurie to have copied them right. But if he cites a published work and I cite that, where’s the sin, even if I don’t actually get it out of the library to check?
Scholarship like art relies on mimesis – not of nature but of previous writers. La créativité, c’est le vol, as Proudhon didn’t say.