Has there been a change in the four paragraph rule

[catmandu57]

One that I'm not aware of. Remember to avoid copyright infringement post no more than four paragraphs and a link to the story. I remember when we were laughing at the freepers for posting entire articles and getting their asses sued. we're better and smarter than that.

[maddezmom]

1. none that I know of

Sometimes people copy and paste the whole thing by accident. If you see something, hit alert and the mods will take care of it. :)

[catmandu57]

2. I've been seeing entire articles

lately.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. One time I wanted to post an article,

but it was only 4 paragraphs long! I wasn't sure if posting it all would violate copyright, so I only posted three paragraphs.

[lindisfarne]

4. Given that a "paragraph" is often a "sentence" in articles, I have often

been mystified by this rule. Some articles consist of 4 sentences, so articles are copied in their entirety. Other articles consist of 400 sentences enclosed in 5 paragraphs, so about 80% of the article gets copied in its entirety. Still other articles consist of 400 sentences enclosed in about 200 paragraphs, so only about 2% of the article gets copied. Since American newspapers are more likely than British newspapers to equate a "sentence" with a "paragraph", fewer "American" sentences are allowed under the rule (however, American articles tend to be shorter and less in depth than British newspapers, so perhaps the percent of the article that gets copied is roughly equivalent).

And we wonder why American kids can't write: they don't have good examples to work off of. "A paragraph is a collection of related sentences dealing with a single topic. To be as effective as possible, a paragraph should contain each of the following: Unity, Coherence, A Topic Sentence, and Adequate Development. (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/general/gl_pgrph2.html)" In addition to newspaper and magazine articles, high school textbooks don't seem to understand what a paragraph is.

How does the rule apply if the article doesn't seem to understand what a paragraph is? Are we allowed to re-punctuate (in terms of where the paragraph breaks fall) the article, to better recreate what a paragraph should be, and then post 4 of these "improved" paragraphs?