plagerism? how close can you write to another persons works?

Question

for example: shakespeare wrote: shall i compare thee to a summers day, thou art more lovely and more temperate.

whereas i wrote: shall i compare thee to a star so bright, or against the day that has just begun...

is this plagerism?

Answer 1

it would be a stretch to call your example plagiarism...but i have seen college students get in trouble for less. my rule of thumb is that if you are using a person's words or ideas, give them a shout out in your paper...i've even have some professors request that you cite your self if you are restating your own ideas from an earlier work...so just play it safe

...if you aren't directly quoting someone, but you have read their work and it is informing and influencing your own writing, give them a quick reference at the end of your essay...just change your "works cited" page to a "references" section, and you're good to go.

Answer 2

I agree. When a character is being described by another character (especially if they are in love) they will very rarely have something bad to say about each other, whether it's looks or personality. The writer falls for this sometimes, I think because they get so involved with the character (in first), they write them as Mary Sues, simply because they're writing from the character's perspective. There have been some books where the character has done bad things, but has magically been let off or whatever they have done, it turned out they did it for a good reason. In others the characters have been given faults that seem to have just been added to make the character more realistic, which doesn't work. I would say this is a product of bad writing. In third person, the author has much more freedom to describe the character as they are truly seen because they are the by-stander of the story and the author creates a more realistic character to follow. When the character can do no wrong is when the author has developed a Mary Sue!

Answer 3

Plagiarism is stealing another person's original ideas or phrasing. If you copy something word for word it's plagiarism. If you paraphrase another person's original ideas it is plagiarism.

Your example is not plagiarism. You are writing a different poem using the same pattern.

Answer 4

yes, that is not as bad of a form of plagerism as it could have been but yes it is. to not plagerise, you have to completely rewrite what was said and then you have to cite where you got your insparation. i know it is a pain, but if you don't you will get in so much trouble expecially if you use shakespeare, every teacher knows him.

Answer 5

sometimes some people thinks the same things, its just which one is going to be the fastest and more popular will be, and only time will tell us which one is the fastest and how many people knows it? so if you've got something in your mind, just spit it out fast, or someone else will :)

Answer 6

just expound on ideas from other people. I don't know if that's plagiarism or not.