Exercise 1: "I Changed the Wording, So It's My Own Writing" — Possible Solution ================================================================================== The classmate's reasoning conflates two separate things: changing the exact words used, and actually generating the underlying idea. Howard's own definition of patchwriting describes exactly this situation - "copying from a source text and then deleting some words, altering grammatical structures, or plugging in one-for-one synonym- substitutes" - and explicitly still counts it as plagiarism. The reason wording alone isn't enough: what a citation actually credits is the source of the IDEA or FINDING, not merely the specific sentence structure used to express it. If a piece of writing follows the same argument, the same sequence of points, and the same overall structure as a source - even with individual words swapped out for synonyms - the underlying intellectual work (research, analysis, organizing the argument) still came from the original source, not from the person doing the rewording. Swapping words is a surface-level change; it doesn't change who actually did the real thinking behind the content. Howard's own framing is genuinely sympathetic here - she argued patchwriting often reflects a real, developmental struggle to engage with unfamiliar material, not deliberate dishonesty. But being sympathetic to why it happens is different from saying it isn't plagiarism - the chapter is explicit that it still counts, even when unintentional. ANSWER: Changing the wording of a source doesn't change who generated the underlying idea or argument - if a paraphrase closely follows a source's own structure and content with only cosmetic word changes, it's patchwriting, which Howard's own definition explicitly still classifies as plagiarism, regardless of intent. A citation credits the source of the idea, not just the specific words used to express it. WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER ------------------------------ This directly applies the chapter's own definition of patchwriting to explain precisely why "changed wording" doesn't satisfy the real requirement for proper attribution.