Plagiarism is an issue for many writers, teachers, and authors. But does checking it before submission help?
The simple answer is yes, it does help. For an extensive answer, you’d have to continue reading this article. Because today, more than 64% of students admit that plagiarizing is a part of their assignment writing—whether intended or not
So, the importance of avoiding it is becoming more and more apparent. Today, we’re going to look at the way you can check for plagiarism in your content and why it’s important. So, let’s begin.
Table of Contents
What Is Plagiarism?
Plagiarism is a form of cheating that involves taking and passing off another person’s ideas, thoughts, or work as one’s own. While plagiarism is entirely unethical in any shape or form, this can be done in different ways. For instance:
- One way is to reword sentences from a source without acknowledging the source in the sentence or paragraph;
- Another way is to paraphrase sentences from a source and not provide a citation for those sentences.
Because of the ease the internet has that allows people to plagiarize, the extensive requirement of removing plagiarism is picking up pace in academic or professional settings. Thus, to avoid plagiarism, students should always cite their sources and give credit to the original author.
They should also make sure that they do not copy an entire paragraph word-for-word without providing a citation for that paragraph in the body of their paper.
How Check For Plagiarism Is Important Before Submission?
The importance of checking for plagiarism before submission cannot be overemphasized. Plagiarism is the act of copying someone else’s work and passing it off as one’s own. It is a serious offense and can lead to expulsion from school, termination of employment, or even criminal prosecution.
While all these factors are only occasional, checking plagiarism before submission has many benefits, such as:
- Finding how much percent of your text is plagiarized;
- Locate the original writer, their website, link, etc.
- Compare the plagiarized content with the original for effective rephrasing;
- For peace of mind when the content is unique.
So, these factors are important in checking for plagiarism. However plagiarism can be intentional or unintentional, but the consequences are very real. The good news is that there are many tools available for detecting plagiarized content online. These tools will scan your content to detect plagiarism.
How To Check For Plagiarism Before Submission
Checking for plagiarism before the submission is a necessity, and here’s how you can do it:
Find A Plagiarism Checker:
The first step is to find a plagiarism detector to help you check for plagiarism in your text. So, look for something that allows you to scan the length of your text, which should be at least 500-1000 words.
And, also make sure the tool has a good reputation among writers and offers key options like excluding quotes or URLs.
Use The Plagiarism Checker:
The next step requires you to scan your content. Once you scan the content, you’ll see this:
If your content is unique, it’ll show the percentage of uniqueness. But, if it’s plagiarized, some percentage or all of it would be plagiarized, like in the image.
Note The Source Down:
The final step is to take note of the source.
This will help you remove plagiarism when you’re rephrasing plagiarized content.
Conclusion
These are some of the reasons checking plagiarism is important before assignment submission. So, make sure you avoid plagiarism from the get-go, and to have some peace of mind, check your content for plagiarism using a detector.