Question

For this Assignment, read the passages provided and compare the original passages to the student writing samples.

Passage 1:

Reference: O’Conner, P. (2003). Woe is I: The grammarphobe’s guide to better English in plain English. New York, NY: Riverhead Books.

A good writer is one you can read without breaking a sweat. If you want a workout, you don’t lift a book—you lift weights. Yet we’re brainwashed to believe that the more brilliant the writer, the tougher the going.

The truth is that the reader is always right. Chances are, if something you’re reading doesn’t make sense, it’s not your fault—it’s the writer’s. And if something you write doesn’t get your point across, it’s probably not the reader’s fault—it’s yours. Too many readers are intimidated and humbled by what they can’t understand, and in some cases that’s precisely the effect the writer is after. But confusion is not complexity; it’s just confusion. A venerable tradition, dating back to the ancient Greek orators, teaches that if you don’t know what you’re talking about, just ratchet up the level of difficulty and no one will ever know.

Don’t confuse simplicity, though, with simplemindedness. A good writer can express an extremely complicated idea clearly and make the job look effortless. But such simplicity is a difficult thing to achieve because to be clear in your writing you have to be clear in your thinking. This is why the simplest and clearest writing has the greatest power to delight, surprise, inform, and move the reader. You can’t have this kind of shared understanding if writer and reader are in an adversary relationship (pp. 195–196).

This last passage was written by a student who wants to use the O’Conner resource in a paper and is trying not to plagiarize. Analyze the student’s work for evidence of plagiarism and/or paraphrasing.

Passage 2:

Some people think the most intelligent writing should be difficult for readers to comprehend. However, this is a misconception about writing. Complicated sentences create unnecessary confusion and prevent readers from understanding the main ideas. Instead, simple and clear writing helps readers understand even the most difficult concepts. Therefore, writers have an important responsibility to express their thoughts and ideas in a way that is succinct, comprehensible, and engaging. A good writer should be mindful of who the target readers are and then use simple and clear language to communicate ideas (O’Conner, 2003).

Identify and explain any evidence of plagiarism and/or paraphrasing that is found in the student passages provided.

Answer 1

Plagiarism can be defined as the act of using the work or the ideas of someone else without crediting the work or the original author. Hence a writer or author may falsely pretend the content and work to be his/her own through plagiarism, which is a wrong and unethical practice.

Paraphrasing, on the other hand, means the rephrasing the original write-up or content in one's own words. Plagiarism is avoided by quoting (crediting the original author through citations) or paraphrasing. A text is cited or quoted when the author wants to keep the exact meaning and wording of the original content and source. Paraphrasing is often used to shorten the original content and text or for clarification.

In my opinion, the student here has done the job well and I could not find any instance of plagiarism. I found rephrasing as shown and described below.

Original text of passage 1: A good writer is one you can read without breaking a sweat. If you want a workout, you don’t lift a book—you lift weights. Yet we’re brainwashed to believe that the more brilliant the writer, the tougher the going.

Paraphrasing in passage 2: Some people think the most intelligent writing should be difficult for readers to comprehend. However, this is a misconception about writing.

Original text of passage 1: A good writer can express an extremely complicated idea clearly and make the job look effortless.

Paraphrasing in passage 2: Instead, simple and clear writing helps readers understand even the most difficult concepts.

Original text of passage 1: This is why the simplest and clearest writing has the greatest power to delight, surprise, inform, and move the reader.

Paraphrasing in passage 2: A good writer should be mindful of who the target readers are and then use simple and clear language to communicate ideas.

In these cases, paraphrasing has been either used to shorten the text, or for adding clarification.