Does the following sentence come from a published work?: "First published 
as a novel in 1962, 'A Clockwork Orange' remains as
meaningful-and frightening-as the day it was published." I am a
writing tutor and a longtime student has turned in a suspiciously
well-written essay, but I don't want to accuse her without proof,
because she is generally trustworthy. I have looked online and haven't
found anything, so it would be in a book or article. A satisfactory
response would a) locate the sentence or b) verify that it can't be
found in any widely available edition of the work, or common criticism
of it. Widely available would mean anything for sale at a chain
bookstore.

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 07 Mar 2004 06:43 PST

The sentence does not appear:

--on the web
--in Lexis-Nexis
--on Amazon.com
--on Questia.com, a common, full-text research service used by many students
--on Highbean/elibrary.com, another common research tool

How many sites/sources would you be comfortable with before concluding
that the sentence is not from a "widely available" source?

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Clarification of Question by fieldlily-ga on 08 Mar 2004 21:29 PST

Hi,

My concern is that the student would be too savvy to use a searchable
Internet resource and would use a book only available in hard copy--of
which (as far as I know :) ) there are many, even in this day and age.
I think that actually verifying that the student didn't plagiarize
would take more than $20 worth of effort; I was hoping that I'd
stumble across a Burgess expert that would be familiar with the quote,
if it was in fact plagiarized. At this point, I've already given the
student the benefit of the doubt and am returning her assignment, so I
think I should delist the question. Thank you for your efforts.

The sentence does not appear in any of the more than 120,000 books
indexed by Amazon.com's "Search Inside the Book" feature. Of course,
that doesn't prove that the sentence is not plagiarized; Amazon's
search is not all-inclusive.

I thought I'd take a look online too because I was curious. 
"Meaningful" and "frightening" do turn up together in a lot of online
commentaries on the novel, as well they might, but that line or
something close to it does not appear in any that I found.

Having a son who is a very able, mature-sounding writer, I am rather
sensitive to suspicions that if something is good, the student
couldn't have written it.  I realize that you know this student's
work, but I also don't think that line is such a knockout that it
couldn't have been delivered by someone with a pretty average
vocabulary and a reasonably competent grasp of sentence construction. 
I don't blame you for wondering, but I do commend you for checking
before questioning the student's authorship.  Sounds to me like she
deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Just one other thought, though:  have you checked prefaces and
editors' introductions to the novel itself?  How about what appears on
the back covers of paperback editions?  And how about reviews of the
movie?

Apteryx

I must agree with Apteryx.  The sentence doesn't strike me as
something that a mediocre student couldn't write.  To me, the
redundant use of the word 'published' suggests that the sentence
probably isn't from a book or article.

Could you provide some other excerpts from the student's essay?

A friend of mine purchased a thesis (allegedly written by a professor)
to present for his degree at Cambridge.

He then added a few pictures and stuff, to personalise it.

However, it wasn't as well received as he had expected although it was good enough.

Indeed, when I was at school and I needed the dough, I used to provide
stuff for fellow students.

I really screwed up on one occasion, a translation into Spanish, where
I introduced a colloquial phrase that really impressed the teacher,
whereas every one of my clients had made some deliberately silly
mistakes.

The lesson? Unexpected quality or the lack of it proves nothing.

Hi everybody,

I already tried the Amazon search and the online search, but I'm
grateful for those efforts.

The sentence is not spectacular, but it's stylistically unique, and
publishing the whole essay (or a larger chunk) is a breach of the
student's privacy. I agree with apteryx-ga that the sentence itself is
not suspicious, but it is most unlikely to be duplicated in another
work unless directly copied. That's why I chose it. I would appreciate
not receiving further comments about the likelihood of plagiarism,
etc.; without violating the student's privacy, I can't furnish enough
of the essay for anyone to make that judgment accurately, and don't
have time to justify all of my causes for concern. No offense, but I'm
a good teacher and know what I'm doing here; I just need some
research. Thank you.

Dear  fieldlily, 

Respecting your request. However, did you consider using plagiarism detectors?

These guys can help you, it's what they do for a living: http://www.turnitin.com

Hi,

I don't know what a plagiarism detector is, but I'd be interested in
finding out more about it, politicalguru-ga. Thank you. And thank you,
lovkraft-ga, for the website: that's a great resource.

To pafalafa-ga: thanks for the research. My concern is that the
student, too savvy to use a searchable Internet source, would have
copied the passage from a book, not an online source at all. This is
really not a $20 question if the answer is "No, the student did not
plagiarize"; a fair price would be much higher, since verifying that
the source is not widely available would involve going to a bookstore
or a library and perusing several books. And I have already waited too
long to return the homework of a student who is likely both honest and
diligent. I was hoping that, if the sentence was in fact from a
published source, someone would recognize it from prior reading. So I
think, in the absence of a positive response, I will de-list the
question. Thanks for everybody's useful suggestions about tracking
this stuff down.