Rogeting: Difference between revisions

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{{short description|Act of replacing words with synonyms, typically done by students to disguise plagiarism}}

{{Neologism|date=November 2020}}

'''Rogeting''' is an informal neologism created to describe the act of modifying a published source by substituting synonyms for sufficient words to fool [[plagiarism detection]] software, often resulting in the creation of new meaningless phrases through extensive synonym swapping. The term, a reference to [[Roget's Thesaurus]], has been attributed{{By whom|date=November 2020}} to Chris Sadler, principal lecturer in business information systems at [[Middlesex University]], who found the practice in papers submitted by his students,<ref name=Grove>{{cite news |last1=Grove |first1=Jack |title=Sinister buttocks? Roget would blush at the crafty cheek Middlesex lecturer gets to the bottom of meaningless phrases found while marking essays |url=https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/sinister-buttocks-roget-would-blush-at-the-crafty-cheek/2015027.article |accessdate=15 July 2015 |publisher=[[Times Higher Education]] |date=7 August 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Schuman |first1=Rebecca |title=Cease Rogeting Proximately! |url=http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/08/writing_clearly_in_student_papers_the_right_click_thesaurus_and_rogeting.html |accessdate=15 July 2015 |publisher=[[Slate (magazine)|Slate]] |date=14 August 2014 }}</ref><ref name=SinisterButtocks>{{cite news |title=Rogeting: why 'sinister buttocks' are creeping into students' essays |url=https://www.theguardian.com/education/shortcuts/2014/aug/08/rogeting-sinister-buttocks-students-essays-plagiarising-thesaurus |accessdate=15 July 2015 |work=The Guardian |date=8 August 2014}}</ref> though there is no scholarly evidence of Rogeting more broadly, as little research into Rogeting has been conducted.

Rogeting simply consists of replacing words with their synonyms, chosen from a thesaurus. Since plagiarism detection software operates by comparing the sample text against publicly available source materials, changing words can fool the software. Several websites can perform this word substitution task online for free. A plagiarism checker would not usually be able to detect the original source; however, the main drawback is that the new automatically generated text might not sound natural or might not make sense at all, thus requiring the intervention of a human proofreader — who has to be careful not to reuse words that were present in the original source. An example of a common phrase that becomes meaningless when random synonyms are used is the replacement of "left behind" (e.g., "The purpose of the daycare checklist was to ensure no children were left behind") with the bizarre statement "sinister buttocks".

== See also ==

*{{annotated link|Article spinning}}

*{{annotated link|Paraphrasing (computational linguistics)}}

== References ==

{{Reflist}}

[[Category:Neologisms]]

[[Category:Plagiarism]]