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“There is much difference between imitating a man and counterfeiting him.”
— Benjamin Franklin
Plagiarism is not just copying someone’s work. It is considered an ethical issue, an academic offense, and can affect a student’s academic reputation and even career opportunities in the future. Even if plagiarism is unintentional, it can have consequences. In other words, whether you intend to plagiarize a source or not, as long as you have assignments to write, you will have to deal with this issue anyway. But don’t worry! This guide will help you understand and avoid plagiarism as a student.
With the right strategies, you can learn how to get rid of plagiarism from your text and write without fear of academic offense.
1. Understand Plagiarism
Understanding plagiarism is an important step in removing it. You need to know what counts as plagiarism and what doesn’t. So, what is plagiarism?
What is Plagiarism?
Plagiarism is writing another person’s words (whether from their speech or writing), ideas, or work without giving them proper credit.
So, by definition, plagiarism constitutes direct copying/pasting someone’s words.
However, plagiarism can still occur if a considerable portion of your words closely matches someone else’s, which can happen when you loosely paraphrase their words.
Furthermore, self-plagiarism is also possible.
What is Self-Plagiarism?
Self-plagiarism occurs when you reuse your own existing work without citing it.
It is also considered an academic offense and should be avoided.
You may wonder why copying your own work is regarded as plagiarism. It is to prevent students from reusing their previous work and presenting it as fresh and new, attempting to avoid assignment work.
Avoiding plagiarizing yourself ensures your work is honest, ethical, and follows academic code of conduct.
Unintentional Plagiarism
Unintentional plagiarism happens when students:
- Forget to cite their sources
- Don’t paraphrase source texts properly
- Write a large portion of text matching an existing work online
- Use AI tools for writing, which often copy-pastes text from sources
Knowing how plagiarism can occur is essentially your first step in trying to avoid and remove it.
2. Track Your Sources
A notable reason behind plagiarism is forgetting your sources, such as books or blog posts, which you consulted or sourced the information from.
Losing track of your sources can naturally lead to missing citations, and then plagiarism.
As such, you need to note down and track your sources, including books, magazines, journals, articles, online PDFs, blog posts, etc., to ensure you don’t forget to cite a piece of information.
How to Track Sources?
The best way to track your sources is to note down citation details right when you are researching.
You might extract information from parts of a source and jump from one source to another, losing track of which piece of information came from where and from which part of a source — leaving you with a jumble, which you will then have to go over again.
So, instead of waiting for your assignment to be finished, try to note down the sources’ citations at the time of research.
Here’s how you can do it:
- Cite as You Research: Don’t wait for your assignment to be finished to go over citations. Note down citations as and while you continue to research.
- Note Down Manually: One way to note down citations is to write and organize them manually, in a notebook or in a text editor on a computer (like MS Word or Google Docs).
- Use Citation Tools: Another way is to use tools like citation generators to generate citations and citation managers to manage and organize citations.
- Avoid Mixing Ideas: Another source of confusion that leads to plagiarism is mixing your own ideas with the ones you’ve researched. To avoid the confusion, you need to distinguish between your ideas and the ones you researched at the time of writing.
Tracking your sources makes it easier to cite them and helps you avoid unnecessary plagiarism.
3. Paraphrase Properly
Paraphrasing means rewriting someone’s ideas in your own words.
Students often need to borrow research material from other sources, and sometimes, they need to paraphrase the original instead of direct-quoting.
However, ineffective or loose paraphrasing can lead to plagiarism. This is why paraphrasing needs to be done thoroughly. A few small changes here and there in the text does not help much, it is in fact bad paraphrasing because it leaves most of the text unchanged.
For effective paraphrasing, make sure you:
- Read the original text properly and understand its main theme and key points.
- Discuss the original message with yourself to clarify it.
- Ensure your interpretation of the original text has no deviations from its original meaning or has no biases.
- Rewrite the original message in your wording, without looking at the original one.
- Compare your text with the original one to ensure its core meaning is intact and that there’s no overlapping in the wording.
- Cite the source you’re paraphrasing.
Remember that, even if you’re paraphrasing a source, you must always cite it in the paper.
Otherwise, uncited work, despite being paraphrased, can lead to a copyright violation of the intellectual property.
4. Consider Direct-Quoting
Direct-quoting, or simply “quoting,” refers to when you write a piece of text verbatim (i.e., without changing it).
Instead of paraphrasing every time, you should strike a balance by direct-quoting; paraphrase where some elaboration might be needed and quote where exact words are required or have more impact.
Both techniques are helpful in avoiding plagiarism.
However, you need to be careful to not overdo quoting.
Quoting too much text can give the feeling that your work is unoriginal and just a cumulation of existing materials.
On the other hand, too much paraphrasing can dilute the original texts.
That’s why you should aim to balance both techniques, along with your own analysis and interpretations.
5. Use AI Plagiarism Tools
Once you’re done writing and paraphrasing in your assignment, it’s best to make sure there’s no plagiarism in it, which you can do by running your assignment through a plagiarism check using plagiarism checker tools.
These AI-powered tools analyze your assignment and check if its text matches that of any sources online.
If plagiarism is found, the affected parts are highlighted. To ensure your assignment is unique and original, you can use a plagiarism remover tool.
This tool analyzes your text and rephrase it using alternative wording while maintaining its intended meaning — ensuring your text becomes unique and free of plagiarism.
However, it should be clarified that while these tools are helpful, they should be treated as assistants and not replacements.
You should still review your work; proofread the assignment, ensure proper paraphrasing, and cite all the sources properly.
6. Cite Your Sources
Last but not least, remember to cite all your sources properly. “Properly” is important here because improper citation can equal plagiarism.
Plus, you must familiarize yourself with the style guide — MLA, APA, or CMOS — required by your institute or professor to ensure your citations are proper and consistent.
What Needs to be Cited?
You should cite the following instances of texts:
- Direct quotes
- Paraphrased ideas
- Data or statistics
- Any information that isn't common knowledge
These six practical strategies will help you better avoid and remove plagiarism from your assignments before you turn them in.
Conclusion
Plagiarism is an academic offense in academia, and as a student, you can ensure your assignments are free of this offense in six practical strategies as highlighted in this guide, including: understanding plagiarism, tracking your sources, effective paraphrasing, direct-quoting, using AI plagiarism tools, and citing your sources.
