Letter from a Reader: The Copy and Paste Food Blogger

Image courtesy of Fashion PULIS reader

Hi Fashion Pulis!

I would like to draw your readers’ attention to a food blogger’s (FB) penchant for copy-pasting. FB is a self proclaimed foodie, yet when it comes to writing about wines FB resorts to copying the winemaker’s notes verbatim, without crediting the sources.

To illustrate:

You can tell how weak FB's wine knowledge is with a simple slip-up like this:

There’s really no shame in admitting that FB does not have a good knowledge about wines, but FB should at least have the decency to admit this.  Proper citation is a very basic rule of writing, and as someone who makes a living from writing, FB should know this full well and be more responsible about it.

FB's lifting isn’t limited to wine though. In a post about Vietnamese cuisine, I spotted these passages:

If you scour FB's blog you’ll find more snippets like these. It’s easy to tell which lines aren’t original because FB's real writing is different, so whenever a sentence is uncharacteristically well-composed, chances are FB simply copied it from somewhere, like a press kit provided by the establishment or company. There’s nothing wrong with referencing the press kit, but if FB is simply too lazy to paraphrase then FB should use quotation marks!

Plagiarism (whether borne of intent or ignorance) has always been something I strongly deplore, and I can't stand seeing someone gain so much popularity while passing off other people's writing as his/her own. Sadly, in our country intellectual theft isn’t taken seriously (hello Tito Sotto). I can only hope that this FB realizes the error of copy-pasting.

Thanks Fashion Pulis for helping bring this to light.

Yours truly,

Elle