If you are unaware of the problems that plagiarism can cause, consider Senator John Walsh, whose postgraduate degree was revoked due to plagiarism discovered in his thesis.
We've all heard about plagiarism and how it can harm a student's academic future. But, if you don't know what plagiarism is, let me explain in a nutshell.
It occurs when someone steals content from another source and publishes it under their own name without crediting the original author.
This can have a negative impact on your academic year because the institute may cancel your degree or expel you.
Now, let’s get back to the main point. Many students keep wondering how we can get rid of plagiarism and make our essays unique, but they don't know a good way to avoid it.
If you are one of those students who are looking for an easy way that can avoid plagiarism in your essays, then this topic will help you.
Here we will show you some of the most important tips that can help you to keep your essay writing from plagiarism.
The tips that students have to follow are:
Gather the Information from Several Sources
The first tip that can help you to avoid plagiarism is to gather information from various. You might be wondering how this tip can avoid plagiarism. Don't worry; let us explain this to you clearly.
Whenever you choose to research and collect data from only a few relevant resources, then there are chances of similarity occurring in your content and also the risk of plagiarism.
So, that’s why you must expand your research and gather data from a variety of online sources. The more you research different sources, the more you'll discover diverse approaches to writing about the same topic.
Whatever you write about, make sure your facts and language choices are drawn from a variety of sources rather than just one.
If you follow this guideline, you will be able to avoid plagiarism in your essays.
Paraphrase Your Essay Writing
Paraphrasing is the process in which we change others' content, thoughts, or ideas in different words without altering the exact meaning. It is a better way for students to avoid plagiarism in their essays.
You can paraphrase the text by changing some words with synonyms, restructuring the sentences, or rephrasing the paragraphs without altering the original context.
Apart from this, you should remember paraphrasing means more than just changing two or three words in a copy-pasted text. It would be best if you did proper paraphrasing like you should modify the author's content in your own words to show that you fully understood it.
Need help getting what we were saying? Let's explain this with an example.
As you can see above, the first paragraph is the original one. We have paraphrased the text in two ways, just changing some words with synonyms, which also disturbs its intent, but in the latter one, we alter the paragraph in different words.
So, by paraphrasing your content, you will be able to avoid plagiarism.
Use an Online Plagiarism Checker
Another helpful tip for students who want to avoid using copied content in their essays is to utilize an online plagiarism checker. To avoid plagiarism in your writing, you must first identify which parts of the text are copied.
It will be easier to avoid plagiarism if you know which section is plagiarized. As a result, it is constantly necessary to examine it.
You can only employ an online tool to check for plagiarism in your writing. These online plagiarism-checking apps use a very powerful AI-based system that allows users to scan the text in a matter of seconds.
You should be very careful when picking a program for checking plagiarism because there are hundreds of them available on the internet. Some of them are effective in their work, while others are only moderately effective. However, some plagiarism checkers are not even competent and cannot provide accurate results.
So, make sure to choose the best plagiarism checker.
Quote the Plagiarized Text
When you choose a piece of information and describe it in your own words, you use quotation marks ("") to link to the original author. It is really useful in preventing plagiarism because when you cite the material. Your readers will realize that the information belongs to another author and that you have correctly quoted them.
To emphasize that you're utilizing the author's precise words, you can also use words like "it is said," "mentioned that," "in the words of," and so on. Remember that you can only quote a few sentences, not the entire text or paragraph. If you quote the entire text, the percentage of plagiarism will not be decreased.
Cite the Sources Properly
Doing proper citations in an essay is very helpful in avoiding plagiarism because there is no need to paraphrase the text. You might be wondering why we use the "Proper" word in the heading.
The answer is simple. Sometimes, when students are done with their research on the topic, they forget from which website or book they have taken the information. When they use the information taken in their essay, they cite the source incorrectly, which can create a problem for them.
Apart from that, you must correctly cite the source. If you don’t know how you can cite the source properly, then don’t worry. We will show you the way.
As you can see above, this is how you can cite the source.
Conclusion
This post was all about tips that can help students to avoid plagiarism in their essays. The first tip is to do proper research on your topic and collect information from different sources. Along with this, if you think you are committing plagiarism in your essay, then use a plagiarism-checking tool to look for duplication.
If your text has plagiarism, then you can avoid it by paraphrasing your essay. By paraphrasing your essay, it will be easy for you to eliminate plagiarism. Moving on, you can also quote or cite your write-ups properly.
This is how you can avoid plagiarism in your essay.