[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by kipperiggy

According to my English professor, as soon as you get somebody else to read your essay and suggest anything, it's plagarism, unless it's something such as "you have many comma rule errors" and you go through and try and find them yourself. I think. I don't know, I tend to block that class out of my memory as soon as I'm out of it.


A play or novel should be underlined and a short story or poem title should be in the quotes. I haven't read the rest of the essay though so that's the only suggestion I have.

Edit: Still haven't read the essay but just remember to watch for slang language, contractions, and comma splices, my professor doesn't stop harping about any of those things.

Your English professor is wrong. Plagiarism is the use of another's work as if it is your own, without proper citation. Here's a helpful definition:

All of the following are considered plagiarism:

• turning in someone else's work as your own
• copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit
• failing to put a quotation in quotation marks
• giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation
• changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit
• copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not (see our section on "fair use" rules)

Obviously, proofreading and editing are just part of the writing process, but so long as the ideas are yours, you're on safe ground. I know whereof I speak, being a college English teacher myself.

As for those who are concerned about plagiarism in the case of this paper--I guarantee you that if you do a quick search you'll find the internet already full of papers comparing Hamlet to Laertes and Fortinbras. It's a very basic Hamlet assignment. I try never to assign "standard" readings of these texts to my students. If the OP's HS English teacher thinks looking at a thesis statement in advance makes this work impossible to plagiarize, he's kidding himself. If he wants to prevent plagiarism, he needs to come up with a more novel assignment.