Response to Gerhardt's "The Rules of Attribution"

In “The Rules of Attribution” by Deborah R. Gerhardt, Gerhardt uses a couple interesting analogies to compare different topics to the rules of plagiarism. The first analogy she uses is about the rules of basketball. She says, “We don’t send our high school basketball stars onto the court without teaching them the rules of the game,” and she continues how our secondary education system doesn’t do a well enough job of preparing students for higher education. In my opinion, using analogies is a powerful way of providing more understanding and insight into a situation. She uses another analogy that it is just common knowledge to recycle paper, plastic and glass. When you see a recycling bin, there is no question in your mind what they are used for. Personally, I think recycling is very important literally and figuratively. So I liked when Gerhardt stated that there was a difference between plagiarism and “the recycling of ideas.” She says that all writing is collaborative writing. In my writing class last semester, I had to do a couple of in class collaborative writing assignments. I liked it in some ways but not in others. With more than one mind thinking of the same idea or topic, you have different ideas and different ways of looking at the same thing. If I would struggle trying to word something just right, it was nice to have someone who understood what I meant and therefore they were able to help me get the idea across, making it stronger and more concrete. I think it is smart to think about all writing as collaborative writing because if you are using a source to help you, it is technically using someone else’s ideas to back up your ideas. When I was finished with my collaborative writing assignment, I put my name on the top as well as the two people who wrote it with me. So if you are using another piece of work to back up your work, it is only right to give the credit to the person who was “helping” you.