An author borrowing and modifying a preceding text is an example of intertextuality, as is a reader referencing one text while reading another. Intertextuality is sometimes confused with plagiarism since it does not involve referring or referencing punctuation (such as quotation marks). An editor's modification of a text is not the same thing as a reader's modification of the text. Intertextuality can be used in academic writing to describe the way earlier works have influenced later ones. For example, James Joyce's Ulysses was very influential on Samuel Beckett's Malone Dies. The ending of Ulysses where Homer's Odyssey ends differs greatly from what one would expect, so Beckett may have been inspired by this work when writing his own. ---