- Details
Plagiarism is a common problem in academic society and schools. Plagiarized content usually has parts of the text or even whole paragraphs copied from other sources without referencing them.
In other words, one person takes someone’s ideas as if they were your own. Such action not only violates copyright but also may bring legal issues. In the academic circle, plagiarism is considered a dishonest action, because you are copying someone’s work without giving credit.
How to tell if work was plagiarized?
During years, students and teachers establish some relations, so they know each other style and thinking patterns. The first hint that work is plagiarized is that writing looks like not his. If he never writes and speaks like the suspicion is raised.
Teachers always are struggling to determine if work was plagiarized. The whole point of education is to make students learn and analyze by themselves. Taking other work as your own is easy, but does not benefit at all. In other words, it becomes tough to write a really unique and different sounding text. Eventually, it will contain sentences and phrases that will sound precisely in other resources. This is not a bad thing. In excellent writing or essay, about 3% of text can be detected as plagiarism, but such work may be considered as original. Only one condition that these matches came from your head and are not copied.
Typical plagiarized work has some specific patterns that may help to detect copied material. The most common indicator is that text may contain different writing style parts. Each student has its own phrases, repetition, and insightful feelings. Differing characters in the document may be an indication that work is plagiarized to accomplish the task.
The best and fastest way of detecting plagiarism is to use technology. The simplest way is to use a search engine to find similar parts of the text. Google is mighty at finding information. The other way is to use a specialized plagiarism checker – a web application where you can send the whole paper and detect similarities among other documents.
Good teachers also can sense if the text is plagiarized and sometimes without a checker, he can tell if work is not original. Let’s go through several paganization indications that may determine if work is original even without sending it to the checker software.
Wrong content
If a student copies text blindly, there is a considerable chance that the version will not match the original assignment. Some information might be outdated and not directly related to the discussion object. Irrelevant information looks conflicting and stands out from other content. The information inside the paragraph maybe not associated with the essay theme. However, irrelevant material may be written originally because of the lack of writing skills. Other factors also should be considered before making final decisions.
Text copied from the web
If the text was copied from the web without further editing, you might find web-specific characters and hidden links in it. Hyperlinks are like breadcrumbs to the source where the text was taken from. Such a case is sporadic – only laziest students copy text blindly without looking through it.
Text style variation
Every student has its dictation style, which should lead through all text. If writing pattern variates in the whole paragraph, there is a minimum chance that parts of the book are copied. Also, this could be due to lousy writing. There are lots of students who can’t write a consistent essay while learning online. To avoid such variations, the student should proofread his work and give it to someone for double-checking if the text is regular.
Missing or irrelevant references
It is nearly impossible to write a good essay without references. Sometimes it is enough to take several random references to check if they match the source. Inconsistent citation indicates that text is taken from the internet. Similarly, if there are few citations, but the text appears too smart – it also raises the suspicion that not all thoughts are original.
Citation consistency
Citation is an excellent indicator of whether the text is plagiarized or not. The teacher looks very careful at this part searching for inaccurate quotes, and misquotes. Multiple published documents use different citation styles that vary in various institutions and disciplines. In a single text work, only one citation style should be applied. If there is more than one citation style mixed in, this means that parts of the text might be copied from other sources along with citations. Most of the text processors are capable of applying styles automatically that may help avoid inaccuracies.
Different fonts in the text
Original essay work should use the same fonts, same color, and layouts. Differing text formatting is obvious when scanning through the text with eyes. Copied text always differs in format, whether it uses different fonts, sizes, line heights, indentations and more. There may be other reasons why formatting differs, better to unify formatting before delivering work.
How to avoid plagiarism?
The best way of reducing the risk of plagiarism is to check text by yourself. Many tools can help determine the risk. The simplest way is to use Google search engine if some parts of text raise suspicion. Online plagiarism checker tools like Turnitin, PrePostSeo, and Copyscape can also be used. Plagiarism checkers are paid tools or offer limited free functionality. You can check a whole essay or a paragraph for plagiarism by pasting it or by uploading the document to a plagiarism checker.
Teachers should make it clear that he will check for plagiarism, so everyone had a chance to provide quality work without trying to risk.
Conclusion
Plagiarism usually is more than plain copying. Often, to avoid suspicion, sentences might be rewritten in their own style, but ideas are taken. Why risk that way if it is easier to give credit to the original author and honor the other party. If you are using help for writing an essay, be sure that they are reputable writers and produce plagiarism free work.