English is taught as first or second language in schools. After the higher secondary school board examination, students lose all contact with English grammar and composition. It is a long way to medical graduation and even longer to postgraduation. A lot is forgotten in this time. As a result, the use of spoken and written English often leaves much to be desired. Read the following two sentences which I heard during a scientific meeting recently, the speaker being a doctor and Director in a Government research organization.
I am an editor of a journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics. I will write more about it some other time. I want to write on only one aspect of it here. I receive a lot of articles for publication in this journal. Some are in good English, others are not. The punctuation marks are just before the next word or sentence instead of at the end of the previous one. The verb is in plural form while the subject is in singular form. Articles are missing, or a definite article is used instead of an indefinite article. The list is endless. I even find SMS language in the text. This is a very discouraging experience. But it has a very great advantage. It helps me check for plagiarism.- That was the very good.
- They are a very important.
"How?" someone asked me when I said this.
"It is simple" I said. "When the grammar, composition, spellings and punctuations are horrible, I am sure it is all original. When it is good English, it is very likely to be copied from some source and pasted."
"That is brilliant detecting" that someone said. "But doctors do that?"
"They are human beings and many human beings want an easy way out. It is so easy to find something on the net or in ebooks, which can be copied and pasted, to be passed as one's own work. It is much more comfortable and the results are so much more pleasing than thinking out text and typing it."
"But plagiarism is copyright violation. It is against the law."
"I wish they would believe me when I told them so" I said. "I had made one of my Resident doctors buy a copy of 'Wren and Martin' (a grammar book) to improve her/his English. The book remained in mint condition even after this Resident doctor qualified and went away."
"Huh?"
"Unfortunately, yes" I said.
