I haven't given much attention to academic honesty and integrity in the past, so this year I'm interested about some things I've read about ethics. There's sections like Plagiarism which strictly wants you to cite anything you get off someone else. What I don't understand is if this can stretch to concepts and structures of the language? When I write, I like to check the sentences I've formed. So I sometimes check google for an assignment I'm doing and if I find better similar forms of words I sometimes want to replace the new found ones with what I've written. Can this be wrong in any way for a school essay? Another example is a second language I'm undertaking where I usually try to absorb word combinations so that I can use it in the way I like or in the way I absorbed it. I asked two teachers which said it's fine though one of them didn't quite understand what I was trying to say (I didn't continue asking about it to that teacher). But when you actually read the ethics, guidelines etc. you see all kinds of things starting from how someone else's words are intellectual property.