Implicit attribution

Writing classes and style manuals consistently emphasize proper source acknowledgment in published writing (hence also in student work). Though attribution is commonly held to be of paramount importance on ethical and other grounds, published writers regularly manage to dispense with explicitness about the use of source material in the course of a text. That is, attribution is often merely implicit – sometimes so weakly so that a scrutinizing reader may be unsure whether it even exists. How is such discourse possible, given the usual strictures? Reports on two data collections based on reader judgments, in which readers are shown to use textual organization (heading, paragraph structure) cues in inferring the presence or absence of attribution, help suggest answers to this question. The stated need to attribute is argued to be highly conditional, based more on a principle of assessed risk than on a categorical requirement of the type normally taught in expository writing classes. This risk-based principle may help account for the minimal use of attribution in certain genres of writing (e.g., basic-level textbooks, newspapers and high-circulation magazines) and its maximal use in others (e.g., scholarly journals).