Opinion - Letters to the Editor   

Wake-up call

The controversy surrounding Kaavya Viswanathan's work is a wake-up call for teachers and students in India. It is time we started viewing plagiarism seriously. Most of the students who go abroad for higher studies get a rude shock when they get their first writing assignment in foreign schools. They are overwhelmed on learning how seriously the issue of plagiarism is treated. This is because of lack of motivation among students to write originally.

A.V. Prahnesh,
New York

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The predicament in which Kaavya finds herself on account of remarkable resemblance some passages of her book bear with the work of Megan McCafferty reminds me of what Samuel Johnson once told an aspiring writer who wanted a feedback on his work. Johnson told him: "Your book is both original and readable but what is original is not readable and what is readable is not original."

D. Balakrishnan,
Coimbatore

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