169. Plagiarism

I’m a member of the Queen’s English Society.  (QES) 

For £20 a year I get a very interesting quarterly magazine called ‘Quest’ and the satisfaction that I am supporting a worthwhile organisation.  

It is not evangelical.  It doesn’t try to preserve the English language the way that the Académie Francais does for French.  Its objective is “to promote the maintenance, knowledge, understanding, development and appreciation of the English language as used both in speech and writing”.  

Every edition of Quest has a number of articles on the English language, most of which I find interesting.  In the current magazine there is a piece on the correct and the unnecessary use of the hyphen.  How about this for an interesting assertion in a recent article?

“English grammar is an algebra that uses fuzzy logic based on norms, conventions and, most important of all, euphony.”

(I never read an article in Quest without a dictionary to hand.)

It also has the occasional joke.  The first joke I remember in it from some years ago was:

Dale, a Yorkshire farmer’s favourite sheepdog, died.  The farmer was distraught and he took photos of the dog to a goldsmith in Leeds and asked if he could make a statue of Dale out of gold.

“Do you want him 18 carats?”

“Nay lad.  Eatin’ bone.”

Occasionally it asks searching, philosophical questions such as:

If father is Pop, how come mother’s not Mop?

The Spring 2013 issue of the Quest magazine arrived in the middle of April.  I started reading an article on page 17 titled, “Attending to the Language”.

What do you call people who go on a course? Are they attenders?  No, they are not.  Apparently, they are attendees.  

“This is something I once wrote about on my blog,” I thought.  (Click here)

I have just seen that the spell check on my Mac has underlined ‘attenders’ as being a spelling mistake but ‘attendees’ remains unblemished and clear.

“Hang on.  This is my post.  I remember using that phrase "unblemished and clear".  Someone’s been to my blog, read my post and lifted it.  The plagiaristic bastard!”

I jumped up and went to find Caroline.  “Look at this!  Look at this!  Some bugger’s stolen my post.”

“Let me see.”

I handed her the magazine and she started to read.  She turned the page and a little later, looked up at me.  She was smiling. 

“What are you laughing at?  It’s not funny.”

“Do you know who wrote it,” she asked.

“Is it someone I know?”

“Not as well as me,” she said.

I looked to the bottom of the page she passed to me and there was the bastard’s name:

             Terry Wilton

I went to my Hotmail “sent” folder.  I had sent that contribution to QES in June 2010, nearly three years ago.  I had completely forgotten about it.

Some day, Playboy Magazine may publish the letter I sent to them in October 1968.  I can’t remember exactly what it was about now but I do remember it was carefully written in my very best and neatest handwriting.