I used a couple quotes from SparkNotes for an English essay in my AP LIT class and was accused of plagiarism. I used my own analysis completely from scratch and provided my own context.
For my 13 years of schooling, I have used SparkNotes for quotes and English help.
Is this really plagiarism or is my teacher overreacting?
“Quotes from sparknotes”? What type of quotes?
It was an essay on the book Jane Erye, I used quotes from the book put on the website
Why would you do that? Just quote from the book!
Did you cite them?
I see that SparkNotes has a section titled, “Important Quotations Explained.” If you used the same ones that SparkNotes selected, I can see why they would accuse you of plagiarism. Part of analysis is finding quotes YOURSELF to support your thesis.
I suggest you not use SparkNotes in the future. You need to learn to think for yourself.
or did you quote not from the book, but from the sparknotes analysis?
This is not plagiarism, as long as you cite it and write your own analysis (not merely paraphrasing SparkNotes’s analysis). To be safe, you should cite it directly from the book next time, or specify that you are citing from a website, but the content was originally published in a book. Again, not plagiarism, and it seems rather ridiculous that you were penalized as such.