Etta turned in a compare and contrast essay on the two civil war generals grant and lee. etta used wikipedia to find information on the two generals' lives and military careers, and figured that since everyone knows about wikipedia and it's publically edited, she wouldn't have to cite it much. etta wrote some paragraphs in which she looked at the wikipedia page and used some of the phrases and words from the site and some of her own. she wrote other paragraphs in which she put all of the wikipedia information into her own words and her own writing style. at the end of the essay, etta made a page called "works cited" and included the url for wikipedia. etta was surprised when she received her essay back as a zero, and her instructor said it was plagiarized and that wikipedia is not an acceptable academic source.