In recognition and celebration of the final Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling, this week’s grammar tip is a little different. This week we will discuss the top three things we learned about writing with sources from Harry Potter. This tip will count down the top three to the most important rule of using sources, all using examples from Harry Potter.

3. Never Skeeter around the truth.

Rita Skeeter, a hard-nosed journalist for the Daily Prophet, uses a Quick Quotes Quill (a quill with an acid-green feather that tends to over-exaggerate or make up information about the person being interviewed). In her column of the paper, she tends to make things up about love triangles among the students, and even false information about Harry himself. Her lies affect the characters in the book in negative ways, such as causing Ron’s mother, Mrs. Weasley, to treat Hermione poorly. 

When you use sources (or interview somebody), never mis-quote or mis-represent the source. Always be as accurate as possible in writing since it is unfair to misrepresent another’s words. Ethical behavior in writing asks you to be fair to your source. Misrepresentation can also negatively affect both your reputation and the original writer’s reputation.

2. Your sources shouldn’t be a Riddle.

In the second book, Harry stumbles across a diary belonging to a young man named Tom Riddle. Harry has no idea who Tom is, but listens to him as he speaks to Harry through the pages of the diary. Tom ends up showing Harry a scene that made it seem as if Hagrid (Harry’s friend) had opened the Chamber of Secrets, an act that lead to the death of a student. This, of course, wasn’t true: Hagrid did not open the chamber. Tom was manipulating Harry (by showing him one part of the story) to gain his trust.

In your writing, you should never trust anything that isn’t from a credible source. Make sure the information you are gathering for your writing is from a source you know is reliable. Know your source and establish the source’s credibility directly.

1. Don’t forget: Plagiarism has punishments.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets introduces us to Gilderoy Lockhart. Lockhart is a world famous author of books wherein he depicts himself as a master against the Dark Arts. He ends up becoming a professor at Hogwarts, but all the spells he knows tend to backfire or work incorrectly. When he is put up to the task of finding the Chamber of Secrets, he tries to flee. He is forced to reveal that he stole the stories for his books from other witches and wizards who were the actual heroes of the stories. Inevitably, it all caught up with him as one of his spells backfires, and he loses all his memory.

Plagiarism is a serious thing. You should never take somebody else’s work without giving them credit. In the end, your lies will always come back to haunt you, and it never ends well. Plagiarism can get you into a lot of trouble. It can lead to flunking the paper or (as Hermione says in the first book) “worse, expelled.”

For this website of the week, we recommend checking out the documentation style sources at the Academic Center website: http://www.uhv.edu/ac/style/main.asp.

Grammatically Correct is a grammar tip of the week created by Academic Center Peer Writing Tutors at the University of Houston-Victoria in Victoria, Texas.

Comments about this newsletter should be directed to Summer Leibensperger, leibenspergers@uhv.edu.

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