At times my son is brazenly nonchalant about certain activities he hasn't yet mastered. I'm thinking particularly of drinking from a glass. He will sit at the table and grasp the glass in one hand, his other hand holding his fork, and then quickly raise the glass to his lips while he is still in the midst of conversation with either his mother or me. At just under three years of age, he's not always able to coordinate all these activities.

I admit, my first impulse when I see milk soaking into his shirt or juice spreading quickly across the table is to say, "Lucas, what are you thinking?! You can't drink like that. You have to be more careful and pay attention to what you're doing." Sometimes, I even follow through on that impulse.  Responding that way, though, is mostly for me: I don't want to clean up his shirt or the table. And, by focusing on the mess, I think I'm missing out on an opportunity to help Lucas develop his coordination more quickly. I could try breaking down the activity for him: "Go ahead and lift the glass with one hand, but put down your fork and don't talk while you do." I could also put a little less milk in the glass, in case of another accident. A response like that would better serve Lucas.

Now, what if I thought of my students and their work with citation in the same way?

I admit, again, that when I find a student using material without the proper citation (or any citation), my first impulse is to say, "What are you thinking? You have to credit your source. That's plagiarism, and it can get you expelled!" This reaction, too, seems mostly for me. I don't want to clean up those words spilled across the page, soaking into my student's writing. It's easier to invoke the commandment of "cite your source" and then explicitly warn of the dire consequences for not doing so. I'm using what Margaret Price has described as a "threatening tone of absolutism" in regards to plagiarism (104). And, with my response and my tone, I'm giving students the impression that "plagiarism is a concrete, knowable set of rules and that these rules can be learned and applied (apparently immediately) by anyone who has the desire to do so" (102-103).  [Full disclosure: Margaret is a friend as well as a former colleague, and she does cite me in her piece, as she observed my class on the day we did an exercise regarding citation.]

Instead of approaching plagiarism as an all-or-nothing proposition, Margaret suggests helping students to understand that "learning to avoid plagiarism is a process of learning conventions and customs, not an instantaneous event" (104). Such learning takes time, and practice. Also, students should know that the conventions and customs of citation are not the same in all areas, so Margaret suggests that "plagiarism policies . . . be context-sensitive" (97). For instance, what of workplace writing that "follows a different system of credit giving and citation than academic writing" (100)? Margaret cites a study by Deborah Begoray that shows how it is sometimes common (and appropriate) for texts to be used without citing an author. Or, an example that hits close to home for me, what about teachers who borrow sections of syllabi from other teachers? When I began teaching, I was offered a syllabus to use, and various handouts, but there were no citations for these works. Was that plagiarism? Or, as Margaret suggests, do we make a distinction between teacher and author when thinking about citing sources: "An author who fails to cite has committed a crime, both moral and legal; a teacher who fails to cite has merely been careless" (101).

Flexible does not mean foolish, however, and Howard, who has written extensively about plagiarism, makes a nice distinction between "fraud," insufficient citation," and "excessive repetition" (475) (and this point is one that Margaret herself echoes). Fraud is intentionally putting forth another's work as your own and should be dealt with severely. But does a case like that equate with one where a student, while attempting to smoothly incorporate a relevant passage, unintentionally drops the signal phrase? Or one where a student, when paraphrasing, has obviously worked hard to change the language of the original piece, but still maintains the same sentence structure? The latter two cases seem to be ones in which the students are attempting to follow the conventions of citation but haven't yet mastered their techniques. I think it is my job to notice how these citation spills happen, and to use them in positive ways to encourage students to try again. The majority of students are not trying to make a mess on purpose. They want to learn how to easily incorporate their sources, to be as nonchalant and practiced as other writers seem to be. They need, though, to be able to spill on occasion, to have spaces where it is all right to make mistakes. Through those mistakes they better learn how to mark the boundaries in their papers, and they can also learn where, when, and how those boundaries can shift. They can become more practiced at the art of citation, and in doing so they will become more responsible writers.

At the very least, cleaning up these citation spills, and avoiding new ones, requires more talk about citation and plagiarism. And, as Margaret says, the talk should not be a question-and-answer session between teacher and student: "Instead, invitations to students to question and discuss plagiarism should be approached as part of their preparation in a discourse community" (105). I can share with students my own concerns and questions regarding my use of others' materials in my teaching and research. And, instead of telling my students, "cite your source," I can ask them why they think citation is considered such a serious business. (Or, why sometimes it’s not. For instance, what of the case of Jayson Blair, who lost his job at The New York Times because of plagiarism, but who just signed a six-figure contract to write about his experience? What conflicting messages do students receive when hearing about plagiarism in and out of the classroom?)

There's also a classroom exercise that I use to try and emphasize the distinction between "your own words" and another's (an updated version of the one Margaret observed the day she visited). I have students exchange papers, and give everyone a set of colored pencils. The reader of a paper must assign to every source a specific color, and also assign a color to the author. Then, the reader goes through the paper and underlines every word with the color that corresponds to its source. If the reader has any difficulty in determining where a word came from, then she points her confusion out to the author. Or, if the author notices that his reader thought he was responsible for a section in the paper where he was paraphrasing, then he knows that he must be clearer about the source.

The most important color for me, though, is gray. Gray because I'm moving away from my previous black-and-white approach to citation: "Learn the rules--cite your source!" Instead, I'm working on helping students understand the two main points that Margaret says they need to know: "(1) that the conventions governing text ownership and attribution are constructed and dynamic; and (2) that all members of an academic community, students and teachers alike, can work both within and on these conventions" (110). The dynamic nature of citation conventions can make for messy work at times; but then again, most learning involves a little mess.

Works Cited

Howard, Rebecca Moore. "Sexuality, Textuality: The Cultural Work of Plagiarism."
      College English 62 (2000): 473-91.

Price, Margaret. "Beyond 'Gotcha!': Situating Plagiarism in Policy and Pedagogy."
     College Composition and Communication 54 (2002): 88-115.

MM