Rhea Kumar
Ms. Ayres
ENG-4UV
June 7, 2015
The Plagiarism of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
Hello Katrina,
It has come to my attention that you have plagiarized a portion of your essay about Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Now, plagiarism is a writing faux pas that many individuals fall victim of. From civil activist, Martin Luther King, to the Beatles-plagiarism has been an aspect of their careers, and they have had to pay the consequences of it. In many cases plagiarism may be unintentional, but no matter what, we as society must respect the works of preceding writers, authors, songwriters, politicians etc.
The first indication that leads me to believe that you have plagiarized is the evident fact that you merely paraphrased George Chaucer’s words. You certainly did not copy his work word for word, but you failed to complete the final revision stage of your editing process. When creating your own essay/work, there is a process you must follow to avoid the plagiarizing. If you had only gone a step further past the paraphrasing stage-you wouldn’t necessarily be in this position. Paraphrasing is a useful tool to collect ideas from the given text, but it is not suffice. The last indication of your plagiarism is that you claimed that the information George provided is “common knowledge”. In reality, knowing that the term Middle English refers to a variation of English used after the Norman Conquest is indeed not common knowledge. This fact is completely
