A Brief Overview of Plagiarism
Writing assignments is one of the most challenging activities students undertake when in college. This can be evidenced by the statistics, such as those from a study conducted by Lafayette College. The study found that up to 18% of college students have written a paper over 20 pages long and even a bigger number, 38% have written at least ten papers between 5 and 19 pages.
There are other voluminous papers such as dissertations that are also written by students that have not been taken into consideration by this study. With such volumes of writing taking place in various institutions on a daily, you may wonder how plagiarism can be prevented.
However, there are several tips that you can follow to ensure that you prevent cases of plagiarism as a student. We have provided a guide below for you that can help you to this end.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism involves stealing information from other sources such as articles and presenting them as one’s own. Plagiarism may occur even when you do not intend to make it happen because as a student, you may lack the knowledge necessary to efficiently summarize the article. This may occur, for instance, when students are given an assignment by the instructor.
With the same question at hand, students are likely to search from the same places and with the same search terms. This will lead them into getting the same results and without knowing it, write the same thing especially because writing on some topics requires certain specific terms that cannot change.
Plagiarism is, however, a serious offense that should not be committed as the original owners of the content are offended upon this realization, and the professors are disappointed as they expected original work.
How to write plagiarism-free content
Learning to prevent plagiarism may be the key to getting your professor to award you high points. We suggest that you use the techniques outlined below to prevent plagiarism:
Paraphrasing
Believe it or not, this is the easiest and yet most effective way for students to prevent plagiarism. To accomplish this, read the source so you understand it fully, make your conclusions and then write that down. This will help you produce original thoughts and words that have not been documented elsewhere before.
Use of citations
As stated earlier, some words used in a particular context or with a certain subject do not have accurate synonyms, and this may lead to plagiarism. However, scholars over the years have figured out ways to work around this problem.
One of them is to cite the source that inspired their work. It is recommended that as a student, you not only rephrase your sentences but cite them as well to avoid any accusations of plagiarism and to play it safe.
Use of quotes
This is also another way through which students can easily get off the hook of plagiarism. The use of quotes will require you as the student to use only a few lines from a certain source and place the chosen words in quotes.
The main rule to be followed here is to use a few lines and not entire paragraphs as this will give the instructor the impression that you are trying to fill up the word count.
Referring to your research
You may find that you had worked on a related topic before and had your work published. Use this as a basis for your new work, but do not forget to cite the work so that your instructor does not assume that you are passing off an old work for a current one.
Getting professional help
Sometimes as students, you end up with plagiarized content because you have other academic and personal priorities that distract you. To prevent plagiarism, you can also hire a professional company such as All Homework Solutions to get the job done.
Our editing services are designed to cater to needs such as plagiarism checks. Usually, these companies have their mechanisms for preventing plagiarism, and therefore, you can be assured of plagiarism-free work. Additionally, you will not have to deal with research papers when you feel unfit for it, and you will get only the best. If you have not tried this option, it may just be the right option for you.
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