Opinion | We Need a New Word for ‘Plagiarism’

Leave it to a linguist to say this, but we need another word. In this case, we need a word for the relatively minor, “duplicative language” version of plagiarism.

To present someone else’s ideas as one’s own is unquestionably wrong, in academia and elsewhere. However, to cite boilerplate statements — the assumptions basic to a field, for instance — word for word, or close to it, without citing the person who typed the words originally is something different, and vastly less egregious. I would argue, in fact, that there may be nothing wrong with it at all, in particular when it is done accidentally.

For example, let me reach for a book that happens to be close at hand as I write: “Writing With Style” by The Economist’s Lane Greene. (It’s a lovely book, by the way. I vigorously recommend it as an alternative to Strunk and White’s hopelessly arbitrary “The Elements of Style.”) I find this passage at the start of one of the chapters: “In recent years researchers in artificial intelligence have unveiled systems that seem to ‘write’ without any human involvement. The best of these churn out remarkably convincing prose.”

This is a simple statement of fact, provided as background for the meat of the chapter. It’s not a notable idea, and it’s not written with meaningful style. But if that sentence were to appear in a book of mine, even decades later, precisely as written or with just a couple of words changed, I’d be guilty of plagiarism. However, I’d be fine if I just reworded the thought minimally as: “Artificial intelligence researchers have recently developed algorithms that seem to ‘write’ by themselves, with the most advanced of them easily generating text that is uncannily similar to what a human would write.”

A few phrases flipped and a few words changed, but the precise same content — so what purpose would my minimal rewording have served? It would seem to be a kind of politesse at best, prioritizing form over content. Of course, there are instances where the form should be elevated over content. For example, where fiction is concerned, we would probably consider word-for-word lifting unacceptable regardless of intent or of what the words “meant”: In that genre, the composition of sentences is a primary component of the art. And to be sure, there are plenty of gray zones between fine writing and technical prose that would be less easy to adjudicate. But gray zones don’t justify neglecting a clear issue.