Then-Harvard President Claudine Gay testifies before the House Education and Workforce Committee in December. She resigned on Jan. 2 amid a plagiarism scandal.

The best writing advice I ever got came from the late great British poet Geoffrey Hill. In a grad seminar I took with him at Boston University in the mid-aughts, he said a sentence I repeat to every composition student I’ve ever taught:

A good idea poorly expressed is not a good idea.

Hill’s dictum is roughly the inverse of Alexander Pope’s definition of “wit” in his “Essay on Criticism”: “What oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d.” Both Hill and Pope are getting at a vital insight not only for writers but for anyone involved in intellectual life: Lots of people have good ideas, but few are able to communicate them well. And it’s the ability to convincingly express a good idea that’s very frequently the hard part.

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I keep thinking about Professor Hill’s advice as I read coverage of the plagiarism scandals engulfing (now former) Harvard President Claudine Gay and one-time MIT Professor Neri Oxman, the wife of one of Gay’s chief antagonists, Bill Ackman. Because for so many covering the story, there are two types of plagiarism: stealing ideas and stealing words. And the latter, they claim, is just not that bad.........

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