EXERCISE 54–5 Avoiding plagiarism in MLA papers

EXERCISE 54–5Avoiding plagiarism in MLA papers

Read the following passage and the information about its source. Then decide whether each student sample is plagiarized or uses the source correctly. If the student sample is plagiarized, click on Plagiarized; if the sample is acceptable, click on OK.

ORIGINAL SOURCE

The conversations in the [James Fenimore] Cooper books have a curious sound in our modern ears. To believe that such talk really ever came out of people’s mouths would be to believe that there was a time when time was of no value to a person who thought he had something to say; when it was the custom to spread a two-minute remark out to ten; when a man’s mouth was a rolling-mill, and busied itself all day long in turning four-foot pigs of thought into thirty-foot bars of conversational railroad iron by attenuation; when subjects were seldom faithfully stuck to, but the talk wandered all around and arrived nowhere; when conversations consisted mainly of irrelevancies, with here and there a relevancy, a relevancy with an embarrassed look, as not being able to explain how it got there.

From Twain, Mark. “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses.” Selected Shorter Writings of Mark Twain. Ed. Walter Blair. Boston: Houghton, 1962. 227-38. Print.

[The source passage is from page 236.]

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Question

EXERCISE 54–5 Avoiding plagiarism in MLA papers - 1 of 5: Mark Twain notes that readers of James Fenimore Cooper are required “to believe that there was a time when time was of no value to a person who thought he had something to say” (236).

2 of 5

Question

EXERCISE 54–5 Avoiding plagiarism in MLA papers - 2 of 5: Mark Twain wonders if people ever conversed the way Cooper’s characters do and if people really did have all the time in the world to listen to one another’s ramblings (236).

3 of 5

Question

EXERCISE 54–5 Avoiding plagiarism in MLA papers - 3 of 5: Among Mark Twain’s objections to Cooper’s writing is the rambling conversational style of his characters, who seldom stick faithfully to their subjects but allow their talk to wander all around and end up nowhere (236).

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Question

EXERCISE 54–5 Avoiding plagiarism in MLA papers - 4 of 5: James Fenimore Cooper’s dialogue consists mainly of irrelevancies, with an occasional embarrassed-looking relevancy that can’t explain how it got there.

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Question

EXERCISE 54–5 Avoiding plagiarism in MLA papers - 5 of 5: Mark Twain ridicules the dialogue in Cooper’s novels as sounding peculiar to modern ears; he points out that the conversations wandered all around and arrived nowhere (236).