Friday, March 25, 2011

Bummed About Borders


I’m sad about the Borders bookstores closing in the greater Chicago area. When I stopped in recently, a soon-to-be-ex-employee told me that all Borders stores in the city are closing, with the exception of the one on State Street in the loop.

It’s so depressing to walk or drive past a closing Borders store and see those garish signs in the windows that scream, “STORE CLOSING!” “EVERYTHING 50-60% OFF!” It’s like writing an obituary in gaudy neon. The signs are like… you know that obnoxiously loud and WAY TOO EXCITED announcer’s voice that you hear in TV commercials for discount furniture stores? It’s like having that guy announce that somebody you love is terminally ill.

Sure, Borders has been a “megastore” among bookstores. More like a Target than like a boutique, more generic than unique. But I don’t mind the size. I love walking in the front door and seeing the rows upon rows of bookshelves, the soaring ceilings, the overhead signs pointing you toward different genres, the colorful and kindly-lit ambience, the comfy sofas, and dozens of other book lovers. The whole atmosphere represented the endless possibility of great things to read.

Beyond One Bookstore

I don’t know why I’m so gloomy about this. I might have guessed it was coming. Amazon.com has been doing a booming business for over a decade now (goodness knows I shop at Amazon myself, though Borders was my store of choice if I wanted to browse in person). Kindles and Nooks have launched e-books into the mainstream. The writing was on the wall.

But Borders was a titan in the industry. For Borders to fall to its knees means that no brick-and-mortar bookstore is safe.

I suppose I didn’t think it would happen so soon. It’s only 2011. Can the old trusty paper-and-ink book really be borderline obsolete? I figured I’d have my own flying car before that happened. Or is the Borders “reorganization” just a sign of the poor economic times?

Maybe my real issue is that I don’t want books to die. I like the feel of a book in my hands. I like the look of the bookshelves in my condo, filled with colorful books of all types and ages and origins. I love browsing bookshelves, letting my eye pass along the rows until something strikes me that I’d like to read or re-read or recommend to someone. It’s a relief to relax with a nice book after staring at a computer screen all day at work. God help me, I even get a kick out of the cover art. I like not having to pay a lot for a book, remember to charge it, or keep track of its plug and accessories.

I would miss books if they go.

The positive side of the Borders closings is that I will probably end up spending more time at my local neighborhood bookstore, Women and Children First. I usually don’t go there because, as the name implies, they have a specific focus, so they wouldn’t carry just any old novel I was after. On the other hand, the store is great for browsing and for discovering new authors. If I have to have a specific book, there’s always Amazon. Or a train ride down to State Street.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Guest Blogger Jen Murtoff on Plagiarism

Today's blog comes from my colleague, the multitalented Jennifer Murtoff. I was shocked when she told me how much plagiarism she encounters, even in supposedly original text written by professional authors. An alternate title for this piece could be, "Plagiarism: It's Not Just for High School Students Anymore!" Enjoy. - Jen

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Plagiarism: No One Will Ever Know—Or Will They?

Back in middle school, we were cautioned against plagiarism—taking someone else’s words and passing them off as our own. It seems to be an easy out for those who don’t want to write a paper or a report for a book they never read.

However, plagiarism is a bad shortcut for several reasons: 1) the cheater is the one who ultimately loses—a person who plagiarizes doesn’t learn what he or she is supposed to learn; 2) it is academic misconduct; 3) it steals another person’s livelihood and intellectual property; 4) it is unethical, mentally lazy, and leads to bad habits later in life.

Writers are often required to sign legal contracts that declare their work will be original. Often the contracts stipulate that the writer will not be paid if the work is not original. However, the number of writers who plagiarize is still appalling.

How can you spot plagiarism?

A good editor can spot plagiarism a mile away. Here are a few things to look for:

1) Shifts in tone or authorial voice: Everyone has a voice, or particular style, when writing. It may vary from piece to piece, but the voice will remain consistent throughout a piece. Written pieces also have tone, which is the level of formality. Writing can have a conversational tone, an informative tone, or a didactic tone. When authorial voice or tone changes suddenly, this may indicate plagiarism.

For example, a book I worked on a few years ago had a very didactic tone. It made a sudden shift to a conversational tone. My curiosity was piqued, and I investigated it online. About 65% of the book was plagiarized.

2) Inconsistent editing (spelling and punctuation): People generally make consistent mistakes and use consistent sentence structure. This is one of the joys of editing: Figure out how your author writes, and you’ve got smooth sailing—his or her mistakes will be relatively predictable. However, when different mistakes are made from section to section or chapter to chapter, this might indicate that something is suspect.

I was working on a biology project, and the text was very poorly written, clearly non-native English, with lots of subject-related spelling mistakes. It suddenly changed to florid prose: one paragraph was a flawlessly written description of the function of lysosomes. The “author” had picked up sections from an online biology review site.

3) Odd shifts of logic or sequencing: A good writer’s thoughts flow naturally and logically. Exceptions are manuscripts that have been written by an inexperienced author or that have been heavily edited. A text raises suspicions if it has sections that seem to reference an earlier concept that cannot be found. This results when an “author” has cut and pasted from a document and has not carefully read the text he or she is “borrowing.”

A law enforcement text I was working referenced an event “in the previous chapter” and listed another event “as previously discussed.” Neither could be found. An online investigation proved that the text was picked from several sources with no citations.

4) Writing inconsistent with the bulk of a student’s work: Students improve slowly and develop writing skills over time. A student does not suddenly go from C-grade writing on tests to producing an A-grade research paper. Look for slow improvements; if you see rapid improvements, the student has probably purchased a paper online—and there are plenty of places to do so.

I found this to be the case when I was tutoring an immigrant student whose writing to that time had been as expected—non-native speaker errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation; and issues with logic and grasp of subject matter. Then he asked me to read his final paper. From the first sentence, I knew it was not his work. The prose was well crafted, containing sentence structures that only a skilled native speaker would attempt. I looked up a sentence or two online and found the original essay. When confronted about this seeming incongruity, he denied copying it and stated that it was all his work. I pointed out that this was academic misconduct and grounds for failing the class.

How can you prove it is plagiarism?

Now that you’ve seen a few ways to spot text that isn’t proprietary, what happens if you suspect plagiarism but aren’t sure if it is or not? How can you investigate further?

I’ve mentioned looking up text online; the internet is a powerful tool that can easily help you determine if something has been picked up from the Web. Here are two steps you can take to check suspect text.

1) Upload text to Google: Place a sentence or two of the suspect text in the search box, and you may get a few hits. If you use quotes, you can find text that has been picked up verbatim (i.e., with no changes). If you do not use quotes, you may find similar text that has a few changes to the wording.

2) Upload text to Turnitin.com: This is a great site to check for plagiarism! It will shoot back a color-coded report that correlates to online sites. You can upload a paper, a chapter, or a book to their site. Check out their sister sites, too: WriteCheck for Students, iThenticate, turnitin for Admissions, and plagiarism.org.

So there you have it; now go out there and do battle against academic misconduct!

Saturday, March 19, 2011

How (Not) to Get a Job, Part 2

In Part 1, I told you about Grace, the total stranger who pestered me on Facebook rather than take a hint that she wasn't getting a job interview.

And now, in the continuing saga of Things That Probably Won't Get You Hired...

Bachelor #2

One day, heading in to work, I bumped into a guy in the elevator. We'll call him Louis.

Louis asked if I worked for K Company. I said yes. He said, "Oh, that's great. I recently applied for a job there as a film editor. Do you know if they're still hiring?" The film project rang a bell; I thought I remembered one of my coworkers mentioning it. I was feeling generous that day, so I gave him my office number and told him he could call me to follow up. But as we all know, no good deed goes unpunished.

Sure enough, Louis called about a week later. I hadn't had a chance to ask around about it, so I took his e-mail address and told him I'd write him if I heard anything.

Another week or two passed, and I found out that the team in question was still hiring. So I e-mailed Louis and told him that if he sent his resume, I'd be happy to pass it along.

I assumed he would e-mail his resume. Silly me. He wrote back and said, "Great! I'll be over tomorrow morning by 10:30 AM!"

I was like... really? I'm not even the hiring manager. And I certainly didn't invite you to come for a visit. This guy was starting to creep me out a little.

Long story short, I asked our receptionist to run interference if he showed up. Which he did. My imagination had run a bit wild, and I imagined him making a scene when she told him that I was in a meeting. But he simply handed her his resume and left quietly.

The icing on the cake:
  • "I thought his name sounded familiar," said our receptionist. "That same guy was here a month ago. He showed up saying he had an interview with Linda" (the hiring manager), "but he didn't have an interview. He had applied for the job, but she had never even contacted him."
  • Louis e-mailed me again when he got home. "Sorry I missed you," he said. "Thanks for referring me!" Um... Louis, my dear... YOU were the one who told ME about the job, remember? His cover letter, addressed to Linda, also mentioned that I had referred him.

It's Not Your Father's Job Market

At one time, job hopefuls were advised to to "pound the pavement" and visit companies in person to deliver their resumes, in the hope of making a good impression on a potential employer. While that advice may have been fine in 1965, I think it is hopelessly out of date today. Especially in big cities like Chicago, where companies all have keycard access and several layers of security. If you randomly show up, the only employee you're likely to meet is a security guard, whose job is to keep you out, or a receptionist, who may or may not even know the hiring manager or be aware that there is an open position. Perhaps it used to appear assertive, but today, showing up uninvited comes across as weird.

Unless career coaches are now advising applicants to tell outright lies in order to get interviews, I think we can all agree that Bachelor #2 is the nutty one here.

Bonus: Bachelor #3

When I was telling one of my co-workers about Bachelor #2, she related this little gem.

A job applicant (let's call him Gene) had applied to a job that my co-worker was hiring for. He came in for an interview, but afterward, the team was lukewarm about him.

While Gene was waiting to hear whether or not he'd been hired, he decided to pass the time by cyber-stalking my co-worker. He wrote to her, "I saw on Twitter that you are getting married soon! Congratulations!"

Gene did not get the job.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

How (Not) to Get a Job, Part 1

Over the past few years, I have seen people use some strange tactics to try to get a job. "Strange" is my nice way of putting it. Rude, offensive, and creepy is more accurate.

Maybe I'm a dinosaur who just needs to realize that times have changed. Then again, maybe I'm right, and these people are crazy. You tell me.

Bachelorette #1

A few years back, I posted an ad on Craigslist for an editing position that my company was hiring for. A woman applied. We'll call her Grace.

Grace was not qualified for the job. I would have just written her back with a polite "Thanks, we've filled the position." Except that it was a Craigslist posting, and I'd been inundated with 250 other equally unqualified applicants. So I responded only to the handful that I wanted to interview, and ignored the other 245.

Then I learned that Grace didn't like to be ignored. She didn't go all Alicia-Silverstone-in-The-Crush on me or anything like that. But she did e-mail me every few days to "follow up." Gradually, these e-mails became annoying. I mean, take a hint, lady! I should have just told her to buzz off, but I was busy.

Next thing I know, I open Facebook, only to find a message from Grace. "Hi!" she said. "I hadn't heard from you via your company account, so I thought I'd try you on here."

I was creeped out. How could it ever conceivably be appropriate to look up a complete stranger on Facebook just to "follow up" on a job application? I was so wigged about it that I wrote her, politely, suggesting that what she had done was not very professional and that she consider how such a thing appeared when applying to jobs in the future. She wrote me back, all defensive of what she had done, as if I were the weird one.

Apparently she saw NOTHING wrong with cyber-stalking somebody to get a job.

The Verdict

So who's the crazy one? Grace, or me?

I'm pretty sure it's Grace. But my curse in life is to always second-guess myself. I have this idea that some perky little twenty-something will jump out from behind a smartphone and tell me, "Duh! People have been doing stuff like that for years! Get with the times, old lady." So I'd like to know what you think.

Next entry: Bachelor #2.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Daylight Savings Time... Or Is It Saving Time?

When I looked it up once, years ago, I was shocked.

Daylight Saving Time? Surely that must be wrong, I thought. Everybody says Daylight Savings Time. But nope. Check any dictionary you want. If you write or say Daylight Savings Time, technically you are in error.

Right or Wrong?

I can't think of any other phrase in English that is so consistently "wrongly" used. I mean, seriously, I never, literally never, hear anybody say Saving Time. If someone said that, it would sound wrong.

It begs the question: Which version is really "wrong"? If society in general has settled on Daylight Savings Time, shouldn't we just change the darn thing already? There's nothing grammatically wrong with it. It's just not what DST's inventors picked when they coined the phrase more than 100 years ago.

I admit, this one has been nagging at me for years. Saving Time sounds so wrong that I am always tempted to commit a professional proofreader's mortal sin: seeing an error and not fixing it, just because I like it better the other way.

Descriptive vs. Prescriptive

It's a classic argument. Should dictionaries be descriptive (that is, go with the flow and adjust their entries according to how people really communicate), or prescriptive (that is, lay down the law, and popular variations be damned)?

All I know is, if my name were Webster, I'd be having a discussion with my buddy Merriam to make a change to next year's edition.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

I'm So Embarrassed...

It's embarrassing, but it's true. Even professional editors and proofreaders make mistakes sometimes.

Hey, nobody's perfect. That's why we have Webster's dictionary, the Chicago Manual, and books like that around: for when we can't remember how to spell or punctuate something.

What's Your Embarrassing Error?

True confessions time. What is that ONE mistake that you always make, even though you should know better?

For me, it's the word supersede. I ALWAYS want to spell it supercede. Spelling it with a c is not an accepted variant spelling. It is not a correct spelling by any stretch of the imagination. I have no idea why it's in my brain at all! And yet, it is. I have looked it up in Webster's more times than I can count, yet the correct spelling somehow fails to stick.

Another true confession: The older I get, the less I care about typography (and, to some extent, punctuation). I don't know if this comes from proofreading things for so many years that I just have Error Fatigue, or what. All I know is, I used to be so anal-retentive about these things, and now I am a lot lazier about it (basically, as long as it's consistent within a document, I don't really care). BAD EDITOR! No biscuit!

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

A Well Written Simile

Some of my favorite devices in writing are similes and metaphors. They can be so interesting, so relatable. They can make even a dry subject more colorful. They can be a true showcase of a writer's wild creativity.

So here's one that I read recently. This is from a science-fiction novel, Deepdrive, written by my former co-worker, Alexander Jablokov. In the book, Tiber is a human character who's kind of a weirdo. During the course of the novel, we learn more about him and why he's such an odd duck. To put it mildly, he had a rough childhood.

Tiber knew that his family had been killed along with the rest during Sukh's reduction of the Arana clanship. Aside from the flickering memories he had pulled out during his long-ago conversation with Elward, everything was blank. Too many savage disasters had slid across his mind like sharp-stoned rock slides, annihilating some memories and burying others so deeply that they could not be recovered without endangering the stability of the personality that had finally arisen from the ruins.

Now THAT is a great simile. Don't you think? Horrible events in one's past being compared to a catastrophic rock slide that destroys some memories and buries others. Haven't we all known somebody like that, or felt a version of it ourselves? Well done, my friend.