CATEGORY: Plagiarism TIME: 8 Min to Read

Tips to Avoid Plagiarism

Plagiarism can cause serious problems. Avoiding plagiarism is necessary to excel and enlighten careers. Avoiding plagiarism is easy and simple. Every writer has to be aware of every rule regarding plagiarism and copyright. You can avoid plagiarism by doing the following:

  • Understanding the context
  • Quote 
  • Proper citation
  • Paraphrasing
  • Use of plagiarism checker tool

1- Understanding about the topic

Research is vital to understanding the need for the topic in writing unmatched essays. Having proper knowledge of a topic can help you write anything in your own words. You might get stuck on many points if you have no knowledge about the topic.

Understand the idea and research through different sources. Do not copy-paste verbatim the text you like although you can rewrite it in your own words to create a better understanding and avoid plagiarism at the same time.

2- Use of Quotation Marks

If you like some words from a writer you can copy-paste them if you want to. Copy-paste is plagiarism but you can avoid it by using quotation marks before and after the text you have copied in order to show the text has been copied from another source.

There are some things that you have to quote every time like using 3 or more consecutive words from another source, using theories, ideas, or any information that you don’t own, or specific words or sentences from an author (direct quotes).

Furthermore, the use of simple quotation marks is enough but when using other-person text which comprises more than 40 words you should use block quotation marks (“ ”). You can although use direct quotes but relying on them every time is not beneficial.

3- Use of a proper citation system

Citation is to give credit to the source by giving a link. Citation involves different aspects like citation styles and citation type. Citation styles are like MLA, APA, Chicago, and some others. Citation types depend on what type of source you have like a website, book, or journal.

4- Citation styles

To cite the text you are using you have to use appropriate style for it to cite it properly. If you are a student you have to ask your teacher or institution to tell you about which type of citation style you have to choose. You need to follow the instructions provided by your supervisor for citation.

If you are running a blog or you are a freelance writer you need to have proper knowledge about what type of style you need to use while citing a text.

Here are some famous and where they are used writing styles:

  • For literature, languages, and art. MLA (Modern Language Association) style, is mostly used in texts surrounding
  • For social and behavioral sciences. APA (American Psychological Association) style, is mostly used in texts about
  • For historical writings. Chicago style is frequently used.

For science-based texts. CSE (Council of Science Editors) style, is mostly used.

5- Know the type of Citations

To cite properly you should know all the types of citations according to the text you have used from another person. This means you have to choose the type of citation you are doing like a citation for a text you used from a website, a citation for a book or a particular chapter of a book, and so on.

You should follow the manual of each style to accurately cite all types of sources you have used in your text including:

  • Websites
  • Books
  • Journal articles
  • Specific chapters of a book
  • Online books
  • Historical documents
  • Films
  • Instructor’s lectures

6-Compile the work cited list

After doing in-text citations your work is complete. After that, you have to put together a detailed list of the sources you have used in your text. Between citation styles, the order, format, and punctuation of these citations will vary. However, each style requires some information about the reference used such as:

  • You have to provide the author’s first and last name or the names of all the authors involved in the making.
  • You need to write the title of the material cited
  • The date at which the source was published in years or in full.
  • The place at which the source is published like a website, book, or journal.

7-  Avoid Plagiarism by Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing is another technique to avoid plagiarism if used correctly. Paraphrasing is to rewrite a text using your own words but keeping the main idea the same. Paraphrasing involves changing words with their particular synonyms to create a new text for better readability.

It is like if you found something that fits perfectly in your text or paper. All you have to do is understand the concept and write it in your own words. Don’t copy verbatim from the source. However, you can copy 2 consecutive words but for more than 2, you have to add quotation marks to avoid plagiarism.

Paraphrasing can be helpful for students and even professionals to gain a grip on a topic by writing in their own words rather than memorizing it. Paraphrasing manually takes a lot of time you can use our online paraphrasing tool to create unique text.

A summary is also used to create an overview of the text to create a better understanding of the topic as compared to paraphrasing is having the same purpose but the word count is more. If a text is not paraphrased properly then it might get accused of plagiarism.

Here are some quick strategies you can use to properly paraphrase a text and avoid plagiarism at the same time:

Read the source material several times, without stopping to take notes as you go.

1. Read the text several times and take notes about the main ideas in the text.

3. Make sure this thing that you understand and remember all the main idea(s).  

4. Keep the main idea(s) in front and write down them in your own words. If you pretend like you are explaining it to a person who has not read the source will help you a lot in this context.

5. Repeat these steps until you have written everything in your own words and it interprets the main idea of the source correctly.

6. If you are unable to write it in your own words you need to use quotation marks around the direct quotes to avoid plagiarism and also make sure to cite it.  

8-  Avoid Plagiarism by Using a Plagiarism Checker

Plagiarism can be avoided by using our online plagiarism detector tool. All you have to do is just create new content and do your best rest to avoid every possibility of plagiarism in your text proofread and check your content by using our online best plagiarism checker.

How to check for plagiarism? You don’t have to do anything except just copy-pasting or uploading your text into the provided area and clicking on “Check Plagiarism”. If any kind of plagiarism is detected our tool will tell you the similarity percentage and will give a link to the source. Check plagiarism free of cost and even you can check it multiple times without paying a single penny for this purpose.