Katrina’s Case Letter

Katrina,
I have recently viewed your essay and have noted signs of plagiarism. Although you were stating facts in the certain paragraph about Middle English, your paraphrasing was done poorly. By using explicit language and sentence structure taken from C. Hugh Holman’s A Handbook to Literature, the paragraph you constructed was comprised of another person’s words. However, this could have been avoided if you either cited or quoted C. Hugh Holman’s Handbook to Literature, or paraphrased using your own language. For future reference, if you like the way someone has written something and do not know how to properly paraphrase it, simply quote it word for word, giving credibility to the author. Another option is to write down your notes in your own language and sentence structure to ensure correct paraphrasing. In your case, when summarizing facts, such as dates, shorten your version from the original and pay close attention to the key ideas instead of how it was worded.
Granting all this, I do believe this was an act of unintentional plagiarism, as you did attempt to restructure the original paragraph and were merely not aware that by using another person’s ideas, you were committing this deed. However, this would have been much more serious if you had committed intentional plagiarism, meaning that you took word for word of someone else’s work and are aware of it. Both unintentional and intentional plagiarism is seen as threads of academic dishonesty and can result in automatic zeros and even expulsion. It is very important that you do not take credit for someone else’s work, as you will most likely become eligible for the following consequences I recently stated in the future.
-Ms. Smith