Spelling counts

What your third-grade teacher told you is truer than you realize. It turns out that a spelling error tripped up a pitiably minor plagiarist who was using cribbed essays to climb the career ladder as . . . an occasional columnist for a Fort Wayne newspaper.

The story was new media, but, ironically, at its core was a very old-media concern—getting the little things right. Friday night, I got an e-mail from a fan of that notable Dartmouth professor of philosophy whose name started this whole thing. And guess what? Jeffrey Hart misspelled his name. It's Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, not Eugene, not Hussey. When I entered the misspelled name into Google, it only turned up a couple pages of hits, and Hart's essay was on the first page, so I spotted it right away. But if Hart had spelled the name correctly and Goeglein had pasted it as such in his own column, Hart's decade-old Dartmouth Review essay, which mentioned the professor only in passing, would probably have been far back in the queue in the 20,000 Google hits his real name gets. And I probably would not have seen it—after all, I was just trying to find out how "notable" he was.

Mental note: always submit plagiarized material to fact check for a good once over.

Comments

It is incredibly easy to check for plagiarism with Google for a pretty surprising reason: English is so complex that even innocuous sounding phrases, if even moderately long, are almost independently created by different authors. Try it.

I took the phrase from above "which mentioned the professor only in passing" and Googled it (inside quotes). One hit, the referenced article itself.

Tried "would probably have been far back in the queue". Again, one hit, the referenced article itself.

"And I probably would not have seen it" (capital not needed), which you would think would give a ton of hits, gives only two unique hits, one, of course, from the paragraph above.

"at its core was a very old-media concern". One hit.

Don't plagiarize. Too easy to get caught.

Posted by chris | March 4, 2008 4:35 PM

Above should read

English is so complex that even innocuous sounding phrases, if even moderately long, are almost never independently created by different authors.

Posted by chris | March 4, 2008 4:36 PM

"desireable?"

Posted by Malignant Bouffant | March 4, 2008 4:53 PM

I like how Karl Rove's go-to-guy for the religious right over the last seven years has morphed into "a pitiably minor plagiarist." He had been in the Bush/Rove inner circle since the beginning of the administration. Here's a snippet from a Washington Post article published in December of 2004 about him.

"Most mornings at 8:30, Rove huddles with about eight White House aides from the four political offices to plot strategy. These offices are public liaison, intergovernmental affairs, political affairs and strategic initiatives.

This is where Rove, Goeglein and others share thoughts on synthesizing the president's ideas, enlisting outside assistance to sell them and heading off potential fights with or among supporters on the outside. When the meeting lets out, Goeglein operates as an ambassador of sorts for Bush and Rove."

Hardly a pitiably minor figure unless, of course, you're considering the whole Bush-Rove operation pitiably minor...

Posted by Les Izmore | March 4, 2008 10:37 PM

I profess economics and had two people turn in an assignment last week plagiarizing the same online review of a book they were assigned to read. I knew when they had the exact same first sentence that it wasn't original work. Google took me right to it.

Posted by djchi | March 5, 2008 6:30 AM