Monday, May 09, 2005

Copying the work of others ...

.. is not as awful as your third-grade teacher told you. So says an editor of a Focus on the Family publication. Gary Schneeberger writes:
When you earn your living arranging words into sentences, you have a deeper appreciation than most for the power of language.
Or at least you should.
You should choose your terms with the careful clarity of an artist selecting colors; you should understand that missing the mark by even the slightest degree of shading jeopardizes the whole picture.
Too bad, then, that a growing number of editorial page editors at American newspapers have hauled out their rhetorical paint-by-numbers kits to accuse readers like you of "plagiarism" for looking to groups like ours for help in organizing your thoughts into persuasive, publishable arguments.

So a writer from a religious group is defining down the meaning of plagiarism. I guess it all depends on the meaning of the word is is.