I am writing this letter for you to comprehend why I have informed you that your written essay of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is a form of plagiarism as well as to educate you on how you may be able to avoid another form of academic dishonesty for your future written works. According to an online website of Indiana University Bloomington, plagiarism is “using others’ ideas and words without clearly acknowledging the source of that information.” Also, as you may probably think, paraphrasing is not plagiarism which is true but only if it is done properly. Your work will only be recognize as an acceptable paraphrase work rather than plagiarized work if all words or phrases are completely written in your own words and sentence structure. In addition to that, replacing or rearranging a few words do not count as a paraphrase, therefore, such works should be cited.
As to your response, you have mentioned your information was a common knowledge, however, the passage on your written essay contains a very similar sentence structure to the definition of Middle English from C. Hugh Holman’s A Handbook to Literature. According to Merriam-Webster Online dictionary, common knowledge means “facts that many or most people know” otherwise it should be in form of quotations and is cited.
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I recommend that you take notes of all the sources you have used for any direct quotes or websites that you have paraphrased an idea. Also, keep in mind that direct quotations must be copied exactly and enclosed in quotations with a proper citation otherwise it would be an example of plagiarism as you have taken an information without acknowledging that it was not your own. Moreover, you should always use your own words and summarize. You should also recheck your work in case of missing a quotations and