Ian McEwan lifts and modifies a few passages and uses them in his novel, ATONEMENT, and poof! Another literary dust-up, for which he must atone.
Eyebrows Are Raised Over Passages in a Best Seller by Ian McEwan – New York Times
These cautionary tales of unintentional plagiarism seem to recur about once a year, with historians getting the worst of it four years ago (Doris Kearns Goodwin, Stephen Ambrose, David McCullough). Like the historians, McEwan was RESEARCHING (in his case, hospitals and nursing care in wartime Britain). He probably copied some snippets that sounded good, saved them for research and reference purposes, and then, over the course of working on his novel for many months, forgot that those words weren’t his. (He’s 58 years old; if he’s like the rest of us, he probably forgets where he put his feet).
It’s an occupational hazard for modern writers. We spend half the working day on our computers: researching, cutting, pasting, writing, rewriting, blocking, moving passages here and there: It’s easy to forget what’s yours and what’s not, unless you develop a system for keeping the work of others separate from your own.
Word processors and even text editors can be easily configured to highlight text or use different-colored fonts. And writers shouldn’t hesitate to change the font color of imported, borrowed, or copied text to RED, the color of embarrassment!
