leftarrow.jpg          Plagiarism    go6      

Plagiarism:

Many people today have rejected the idea that there is such a thing as absolute objectivity since they do not believe that it can be achieved.

Even though few of the original words remain in the passage above, the thought expressed has been taken from another writer and offered as your own. Even if you found a way to express Staffen's idea without using any of her original words, that would still constitute plagiarism. Sorry. If you're going to use someone else's words and/or ideas, you have to give them due credit.

Use someone else's words and ideas, go to jail. Well, it's not quite that bad, but academics don't have much sense of humor about cheating. I'll admit, I kind of enjoyed the student who turned in a paper his friend had written for the same course the preceding semester. He just whited-out his friend's name and typed his own over it--and you could read the original name from the back of the page. He took the course again.