Oops! Oops! (Be Careful)

Greetings again. I hope you’re doing well.

As I write this post, my foot is propped up on pillows. Last month at a museum, a large schoolboy who was “horsing around” with classmates kicked me in the ankle. The ankle and foot remain somewhat sore and swollen, and so I elevate them when I can.

The student was just being careless, but he caused some pain. Likewise, carelessness in writing can produce discomfort. Here are 3 recent instances.

First instance: As I was grading a student’s writing, I noticed a sentence that didn’t fit. I typed the sentence into Google—and found the sentence in something posted. The student had carelessly “cut and pasted” the sentence. Because of this plagiarism, she received a low grade on the writing. She was warned that she would fail the course if she plagiarized again.

Second instance: Recently a researcher complained that he had lots of library work to do. The journal to which he was submitting a paper required references to list beginning and ending page numbers. But in his initial library work, the researcher had carelessly recorded only beginning page numbers. He therefore now had to do more work.

Third instance: A couple of days ago, I was hurrying to finish drafting a resource post. And carelessly, I didn’t provide a link to the resource. Fortunately, when Alex translated the post into Spanish, she noticed that the link was missing. She told me, and I added the link before releasing the post. But how embarrassing!

Take care—

Barbara