Looking for tips to avoid Plagiarism? Here are 5 best tips
Plagiarism is a curse that will ruin and damage your reputation as well as your business. Taking credit of someone else’s work, do you think it’s right? Of, course not. It will put bad impression on your audience about your originality and authenticity. It is a clear dishonesty and considered as harm to the source you have taken the content from. Plagiarized content is not only the content that have same words, it can be same idea or same expressions also. When you don’t mention the original source or cite the reference it is included in plagiarism, but if you do so it won’t be counted as copied.
There are different types of plagiarism that people practice. Let’s have a look at them.
Direct plagiarism:
It is when you don’t change a single word or even a punctuation mark. It includes copy and paste as it is available on author’s source. Taking a whole paragraph or content from another website and not mentioning the source or adding a quotation mark is direct plagiarism. It is considered as the worst kind of plagiarism because there is not even a sign of trying to change something. Also when you pay someone to do your task and then publish it on site with your name is direct plagiarism. Direct plagiarism is the easiest to get caught through different amazing plagiarism checkers available online.
Self-plagiarism:
It is when you use your own work repeatedly. The post or content that is already published online by you is used again for the same niche is called self-plagiarism. This makes people lose interest in your content also there can be absence of relevancy.
Mosaic plagiarism:
When you are picking up the content from different sources and different authors to make a whole new piece of writing. Taking material from many different sites and not adding the quotation marks or mentioning the reference is mosaic plagiarism. In this kind of copied content you are taking credit at the name of many authors.
Accidental plagiarism:
Clear by its name, plagiarism not done intentionally. When you use someone’s work and forget to cite the reference or else misquote the source is known as accidental plagiarism.
Why people plagiarize their work?
There are many different reasons people opt for plagiarism. It depends on the situation.
Down below are some of those reasons:
- Lack of time
- Aiming to reach the top as soon as possible
- Lack of expertise
- The fear of failure and loss in business
- Workload
- Lack of motivation to look for new ideas and concepts
- Sometimes overconfidence that you won’t be caught
How to prevent plagiarism?
There are many ways you can get rid of plagiarized content. If you follow the steps mentioned below you will not be set guilty of plagiarism.
- Mention the sources:
A citation will help audience to know that the piece of text they are reading is not yours. It will have a good impression of you on your readers that you are not trying to take the credit of what is not yours. Make a list of sources you are picking the ideas from so that at the end you can mention them all without missing any.
There are different citation styles you can use.
What is citation style?
How the citation will appear on the page will be determined by citation style. This style is a set of official rules and ordinance for documenting sources and references. How you will get to know which style you should go for, it depends on the type of content or document you are making. You can get help from some experts also.
There are actually three main citation styles APA, MLA and Chicago. Examples you can see below:
(APA style)
(MLA style)
(Chicago manual of style)
- Paraphrasing tools:
Paraphrasers are best options to save time and to get unique content. Rewording makes your content different from the original by changing the expressions and phrases. These tools replace words with their best possible synonyms. To make it more exclusive you can add some new ideas yourself.
Whenever you are rephrasing a text remember that the structure and sentences are altered but meaning should not be changed. You can try paraphrasers mentioned below to get new and accurate rephrased content.
These rewording tools give you an option to select the language you want your result in. You can even choose the mode like simple, fluency, creative and so on.
- Don’t miss quotations:
When you are about to write a saying or exact words of any author the simplest way is to add quotation mark around it. This will tell people that the particular text or words are not yours. After putting quotation marks also write the name of the author in the brackets to let readers know whose that words are.
You can even add quotation block to change the typical appearance of quotation marks. This is used when you are copying word to word or line to line. But if you are making changes even a little bit it will be wrong to attribute it to the original author.
- Put in your own ideas:
After reading and gathering the data from different sources, try brainstorming to add new concepts of your own. If you are adding new ideas to someone’s content keep in mind you have to mention the source there too. Follow the guidelines to prevent plagiarism when you takes someone’s words or outline.
Self-plagiarism is also a problem with many writers. It is when you copy your own content from previous published posts. When you have to write on same niche many times it happens that your own writing gets copied by you. Don’t take it light, it is as wrong and risky as other plagiarized content.
- Use of plagiarism checkers:
In this modern era you don’t have to go through the whole written text to check if it has something copied or not. This is not even possible for full length articles. So for this purpose you have been provided with some amazing plagiarism checkers online. They will detect all the duplicate content and will let you know in percentages. Some of these tools also show you the original sources from where the certain lines or paragraphs have been taken.
Below are some examples of plagiarism checkers.
