Main idea

The question "is this still my text?" is usually put in terms of gesture: did the sentences come out of my fingers? That criterion says nothing, because it measures execution and not responsibility.

The criterion that holds is the list of what has not been delegated. If the idea, the angle, the experience, the examples, the judgment and the responsibility come from elsewhere, the text no longer belongs to the person who signs it — even if they typed it. If those elements remain theirs and only the shaping was handed over, the text stays theirs — even if they didn't type it.

Authorship is therefore read in a distribution, not in a gesture.

Why it matters

This makes the question decidable. "Did I write this text?" has no stable answer; "what did I delegate?" has one, and it can be enumerated.

It also shifts the requirement: it is no longer about proving you worked, but about checking you kept the part that commits you — and that check happens beforehand, at the moment of deciding what to hand over.

Nuances and limits

The boundary isn't always clean: a rephrasing can shift a nuance, and so touch judgment without looking like it. That is why rereading is part of what cannot be delegated.

And the question of authorship doesn't exhaust that of honesty: what makes a text yours says nothing about what you have to declare about it.

Open questions

• Where exactly does the line run between rephrasing and deciding, when the phrasing carries the nuance?