July 14, 2006

'Creative Recycling' vs. Plagiarism

To the Editor:

Kaavya Viswanathan is fortunate to have as kind and generous a defender as Deborah R. Gerhardt ("The Rules of Attribution," The Chronicle Review, May 26). However, Gerhardt is too generous, given that Viswanathan's fault has long plagued the world of footnoted scholarship, and, thanks in large part to the Web, is on the swift rise in every creative field.

When you pass off someone else's words and work as your own, without attribution, it's just plain wrong. And