Guidelines for Avoiding Plagiarism
Virginia F. Wray
The following is from the opening of Chapter 5 of Barbara W. Tuchman’s award-winning book A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (Ballantine: New York, 1978). Read it carefully. Below the Tuchman passage are five separate paragraphs. Can you judge whether or not each of these five paragraphs uses the Tuchman passage fairly and documents adequately? The documentation style in the paragraphs is the Modern Language Association (MLA) style that you will use in your English 102 class.
Passage from A Distant Mirror:
"In October 1347, two months after the fall of Calais, Genoese trading ships put into the harbor of Messina in Sicily with dead and dying men at the oars. The ships had come from the Black Sea port of Caffa (now Feodosiya) in the Crimea, where the Genoese maintained a trading post. The diseased sailors showed strange black swellings about the size of an egg or an apple in the armpits and groin. The swellings oozed blood and pus and were followed by spreading boils and black blotches on the skin from internal bleeding. The sick suffered severe pain and died quickly within five days of the first symptoms. As the disease spread, other symptoms of continuous fever and spitting of blood appeared instead of the swelling or buboes. These victims coughed and sweated heavily and died even more quickly, within three days or less, sometimes in 24 hours. In both types everything that issued from the body--breath, sweat, blood from the buboes and lungs, bloody urine, and blood-blackened excrement--smelled foul. Depression and despair accompanied the physical symptoms¼
The disease was bubonic plague, present in two forms: one that infected the bloodstream, causing the buboes and internal bleeding, and was spread by contact; and a second, more virulent pneumonic type that infected the lungs and was spread by respiratory infection. The presence of both at once caused the high mortality and speed of contagion. So lethal was the disease that cases were known of persons going to bed well and dying before they woke, of doctors catching the illness at the bedside and dying before the patient. ¼ The malignity of the pestilence appeared more terrible because its victims knew no prevention and no remedy."
PARAGRAPH 1
The deadly bubonic plague that struck Europe in 1347 actually was two distinct clinical types. The first type was the less severe. It caused swelling of the lymph nodes called buboes. These swelling most frequently occurred in the groin area and sometimes burst and oozed. This first type also infected the blood and caused internal hemorrhaging. It spread only by actual physical contact. The second more rampant type infected the lungs and was rapidly and easily spread through the air like any respiratory infection.
PARAGRAPH 2
In 1347 when the bubonic plague broke out in Europe, there were two strands of the disease: "one that infected the bloodstream, causing the buboes and internal bleeding, and was spread by contact; and a second, more virulent pneumonic type that infected the lungs and was spread by respiratory infection" (Tuchman 92). Because of the presence of both strands, the mortality rate was high and the speed of contagion was quick. The disease was so lethal that cases were known of persons going to bed well and dying before they woke.
PARAGRAPH 3
During the onset of the AIDS virus in the early 1980’s, newspaper editorialists and TV commentators occasionally drew an analogy between AIDS and the bubonic plague that devastated Europe in the 14th century. As horrible and numerous as the deaths have been from AIDS, the circumstances have proved to be quite different. One major difference is clear from Tuchman’s discussion of the plague. The victims of the plague "knew no prevention and no remedy" (93) for their killing disease, a disease that we know they could contract merely by breathing infected air (92). Since we have known for years now that the AIDS virus is communicated only through intimate contact or shared hypodermic needles, we, unlike the 14th century, do know how to prevent the spread of our disease, even if we, too, have "no remedy". Unlike the plague when "cases were known of persons going to bed well and dying before they woke," (93) the AIDS virus can lie dormant for years before bringing down its victims. Finally, the bubonic plague was hardest on the very old and very young, while AIDS continues to inflict its devastation on many victims in their prime.
PARAGRAPH 4
In 1347 Genoese trading ships returning from the Black sea port of Caffa (now Feodosiya) put into the harbor of Messina in Sicily with dead and dying men at the oars. These men were infected with bubonic plague. They showed strange black swellings about the size of an egg or apple in the armpits and groin. These swellings oozed blood and pus and were followed by spreading boils and black blotches on the skin from internal bleeding. These men died within five days of their first symptoms. But when the disease spread, subsequent victims coughed and sweated heavily and died within three days. What both types had in common was the foul smell of everything that issued from victims’ bodies and the depression and despair that accompanied their physical symptoms.
PARAGRAPH 5
Sailors who brought the bubonic plague back to Europe with them from the Crimea in 1347 (Tuchman 92) "showed strange black swellings about the size of an egg or an apple in the armpits and groin" (Tuchman 92). These "swellings oozed blood and pus and were followed by spreading boils and black blotches on the skin from internal bleeding" (Tuchman 92). These sailors with visible signs of the disease "suffered severe pain and died quickly within five days of the first symptoms" (Tuchman 92).
PARAGRAPH 1
The writer of the first paragraph has carefully read the Tuchman passage and clearly used a dictionary to help her understand fully the medical terms that the original passage uses. She then has carefully constructed her own paragraph in her own words. She is, nonetheless, guilty of plagiarism for she is clearly indebted to Tuchman for her understanding of the two strands of the disease and must give credit to that source.
According to Barbara Tuchman, the deadly bubonic plague that struck Europe in 1347 actually was two distinct clinical types. The first type was the less severe. It caused swelling of the lymph nodes called buboes. These swelling most frequently occurred in the groin area and sometimes burst and oozed. This first type also infected the blood and caused internal hemorrhaging. It spread only by actual physical contact. The second more rampant type infected the lungs and was rapidly and easily spread through the air like any respiratory infection (92).
PARAGRAPH 2
Although the student in the second paragraph begins by accurately and fairly citing Tuchman, he continues after his citation to use the source, sometimes even verbatim, without giving credit. Below is an acceptable revision of paragraph 2:
In 1347 when the bubonic plague broke out in Europe, there were, according to Tuchman, two strands of the disease: "one that infected the bloodstream, causing the buboes and internal bleeding, and was spread by contact; and a second, more virulent pneumonic type, that infected the lungs and was spread by respiratory infection" (92). The effects of this dual strand, Tuchman concludes, were such high mortality and contagion rates that "cases were known of persons going to bed well and dying before they woke" (92).
PARAGRAPH 3
The third paragraph shows a thoughtful, serious student who had clearly understood her source, who has a thesis of her own, and who has fairly used and documented the Tuchman passage in support of her own thesis.
PARAGRAPH 4
The fourth paragraph is blatantly plagiarized. Its writer has assumed the content, movement, and even much of the wording of the source without giving any credit.
PARAGRAPH 5
Although the fifth paragraph does not constitute plagiarism, it does not evidence serious and acceptable thought on the part of its author. His careful cut and paste job, and frequent documenting of ideas from Tuchman only draw attention to the fact that he has not a single idea of his. He is not seriously engaging his subject; he is merely regurgitating what he has read and cautiously documenting every point. He will not get into trouble for plagiarism. But neither will his vacuous paper be acceptable.