View Single Post
Old 08-11-2008, 10:39 AM   #4 (permalink)
MSD
The sky calls to us ...
 
MSD's Avatar
 
Super Moderator
Location: CT
Quote:
Originally Posted by Willravel View Post
I can't really say if it's plagiarism unless I saw the context of her paper. I've written papers that likely look like source material before, but it hasn't been plagiarism but rather the wording is obvious. An example:

I'm writing a paper on the Third Reich for a European history class. Obviously some of this report will be done on the history of Adolph Hitler (Godwin!).

I write:
This is written without even consulting Wikipedia, from another source, but it's a very common and reasonable way to state where Hitler was born. If I happen to write a sentence on my own that's very similar or the same as a sentence from elsewhere, am I truly guilty of plagiarism?
According to reasonable people, no. According to the professor I never took a class with who would fail people for something as simple as having a period instead of a comma in a citation, yes. The most important thing is that your writing style is consistent from paper to paper.
MSD is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73