patchwriting

Internet-savvy, intertextual ingénues don't steal words; they engage in "patchwriting" and "pastiche," constructing essays the way they create eclectic music playlists for their iPods.

It's Not Theft, It's Pastiche 2009

Patchwriting, which is also referred to as mosaic plagiarism, is a term originally coined by Rebecca Moore Howard. The term refers to the situation in which writers use material derived from another source, but rather than quoting the material directly, change the wording or word order slightly before including it in their own work. (See Howard's original article: "Plagiarisms, Authorships, and the Academic Death Penalty", published in College English 57.7 (1995): 788-806  in JSTOR DOI: 10.2307/378403.) Patchwriting includes: situations where a writer merely deletes some words from an included text but doesn't indicate the portions that are directly quoted situations where a writer substitutes synonyms (words or phrases) for some words or phrases in an included text without indicating directly quoted material situations where a writer varies the grammatical structure slightly from the original text, but retains the character and language of the original text. combinations of all three of the above

LibGuides: Plagiarism: Patchwriting 2024