Fabrication is the creation of something unreal by further expanding it into reality.

It also violates one of the cardinal rules of journalism.

To seek satisfaction as a working journalist by using fabrication to enhance a greater point demonstrates pure simple-mindedness.

For those future journalists who are planning to venture into this seductive area of professional laziness, I would say, don’t even think about it.

You can land into a deep, deep, hole that will be difficult to climb out of — it’s like removing a very tough stain from a favorite shirt.

It stays with you regardless.

Almost two weeks ago, an award-winning newspaper columnist from the Boston Globe was forced to resign after admitting total fabrication of several columns during April and May 1998.

Her name is Patricia Smith.

Why would a recipient of the 1998 Distinguished Writing Award from the American Society of Newspaper Editors, a 1997 Pulitzer prize finalist, a published poet and an outspoken local activist allow herself to be tempted into passing off creative writing as journalism?

How could Patricia Smith elect to do something as dumb as openly destroying her career?

Was something truly missing in her personal life, like companionship with another person or engaging in outside hobbies?

Were there any clear signs of overall unhappiness with being an African-American woman columnist at the Boston Globe?

Or was it the pure unhappiness of an African-American living in Boston?

Can her complete disillusionment with journalism in general stimulated a need for fabrication?

Who really knows?

Only Patricia Smith can answer these questions, for both the public and herself, after a period of intense soul-searching.

There is not excuse for the senselessness of creating falsehoods under the guise of news.

It opens an avenue to just publicly cop out.

Instead of having her submit a resignation with a final column, The Boston Globe should have immediately fired her!

To assume that I might feel sympathetic toward Ms. Smith during her fall from grace as an African-American female columnist would be a serious error in judgment.

Forget it!

I am not supportive because I do not condone her as a “columnist.”

I really don’t know who she was trying to fool in that newsroom.

It was plainly just that she finally got busted.

Journalism doesn’t need any more liars like her.

Only people who are fully capable of telling the truth deserve to be called journalists.

Apparently, despite all of the high journalistic praises, Patricia Smith couldn’t figure out the core differences between fact and fiction.

It cost her a successful writing career.

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Adrian De Vore is a senior in hotel, restaurant and institution management from Newark, N.J.