Is this plagiarism?

[Lionel Mandrake]

Capital Community College has a web page that helps people understand just what is, and what is not, plagiarism:

http://www.ccc.commnet.edu/mla/plagiarism.shtml

In a hypothetical example from this web page, the original text is from Elaine Tyler May's "Myths and Realities of the American Family" and reads as follows:

"Because women's wages often continue to reflect the fiction that men earn the family wage, single mothers rarely earn enough to support themselves and their children adequately. And because work is still organized around the assumption that mothers stay home with children, even though few mothers can afford to do so, child-care facilities in the United States remain woefully inadequate."

If the following text were part of a student paper, would it be plagiarism?

"As Elaine Tyler May points out, 'women's wages often continue to reflect the fiction that men earn the family wage' (588). Thus many single mothers cannot support themselves and their children adequately. Furthermore, since work is based on the assumption that mothers stay home with children, facilities for day care in this country are still 'woefully inadequate.' (May 589)."

In my opinion this is a borderline case, which shows that what constitutes plagiarism is not always obvious. The answer on the above web page might surprise you. It certainly surprised me.

Question about plagiarism and its definition crop up in many situations other than student papers. For example, The Office of Research Integrity of the US HHS Department has a policy on plagiarism:

http://ori.dhhs.gov/policies/plagiarism.shtml

Following is an excerpt from this web page:

"Substantial unattributed textual copying of another's work means the unattributed verbatim or nearly verbatim copying of sentences and paragraphs which materially mislead the ordinary reader regarding the contributions of the author. ORI generally does not pursue the limited use of identical or nearly-identical phrases which describe a commonly-used methodology or previous research ... "

Although the context here is scientific publishing, I believe the distinction between "substantial unattributed textual copying" and "limited use of identical or nearly-identical phrases" is of more general applicability. To accuse someone of plagiarism because of the use of a short phrase (which could easily have been thought up independently) would be ridiculous in any context.