How to Avoid Plagiarism in Academic Writing: Starting from scratch to fill in your assignment or thesis paper can be a pretty hectic job. You must rely on another study or source to make your own work credible before submission. These elements are crucial when an institute defines a thesis or assignment work.
But one common element that is an essential part of every educational institute is plagiarism-free content. Institutes evaluate a student’s creativity by analyzing the extent of uniqueness in their work.
That is why students are bound to avoid plagiarism in their academic submissions. This article will share some valuable insights on how students can avoid plagiarism in their academic writing. Besides reducing plagiarism, these tips will also help students improve their writing abilities.
Dedicate Some Time
If you’re in a hurry while writing an assignment, you’re probably just reading and writing it from a source. This action makes you a victim of direct plagiarism, and ultimately it becomes a lot harder to undo your work.
Make sure to leave enough time windows between the deadline and research work to perform your task thoroughly. When you start working early, you get sufficient time to focus on every bit of detail. It gives you more time to think and implement so you don’t miss out on any piece of information.
Follow Citations
If you’re taking some information from a published source like a book or research paper, it’s recommended to feature a citation after that sentence mentioned in your writing.
Different referencing styles are followed based on the criteria defined by the education institute. Citation styles include APA, Chicago, or Harvard style referencing.
But every referencing style should state the name and date of the original author. This information can be further supported by adding a reference page at the end of your thesis or assignment.
Sources on the reference page should relate to the in-text citations mentioned in your writing. Referencing should be mentioned in brackets at the beginning, middle, or end of a paragraph.
Google Scholar is the easiest method to find credible information with ready-made citations. It’s a platform that provides an extensive range of knowledge for students and researchers with a quick button to cite that source in different referencing styles.
Quotations
The concept of adding quotations is similar to that of reference. These quotations can be taken anywhere, like a historic address or journal. But you can’t just copy and paste someone else’s saying in your text; otherwise, it’ll become duplicated content.
There are guidelines to mention quotations in your written work. First, you should always use the “quotation marks” at the beginning and end of the quoted sentence. These marks give a distinctive identity to the quote in your original work.
Secondly, it is recommended to mention the credit of the original author of the quotation. This addition brings value to the quote, and it is ethically correct to do so.
Proofread Before Submission
Proofreading an assignment or essay before the submission is an important activity. It allows a person to realize their mistakes by analyzing their work. It’s an essential activity that helps to identify any grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, or even typing mistakes.
In most cases, the built-in grammar checkers are helpful to avoid such mistakes. It is recommended to proofread an article more than once to have a brief outline of the content structure.
This activity helps identify any identical sentences or phrases that can lead to intentional or unintentional plagiarism. We can further edit and change it to make it different to avoid self-plagiarism from unwanted repetition.
Paraphrase The Content
The most effective technique to avoid plagiarism in your academic writing is paraphrasing. Almost every student from a primary education level is taught about paraphrasing. This technique is beneficial to enhance students’ reading and writing skills.
But on the other hand, it’s a pretty time-consuming activity as well. Researching some piece of information and then portraying it in your own words is quite a challenging job. If not done right, one may plagiarize their content intentionally.
A convenient way to instantly paraphrase the content is through online paraphrasing tool. These web-based platforms provide paraphrasing aid based on NLP technology to provide the best alternative set of words and phrases. It instantly makes the content unique with just one click.
Structure the Information
It’s essential to distribute the information adequately in different sections of your thesis assignment. Repetition of the same piece of information in a separate area can bring self-plagiarism to written work.
Therefore, try to distribute information and add value to it to make it more descriptive. Imposing all the researched information on one page can make it challenging to complete the word count with original content.
Use relevant headings and bullet points to present your information uniquely. Shuffling the word-formation or changing the voice of a sentence helps too. But in some cases, it might make it difficult to read the information.
Use Plagiarism Checker
Teachers and evaluators rely on plagiarism-checking software to grade the creativity score on a student’s work. These tools give accurate insights into duplicated content.
In some cases, the educational institute provides a plagiarism checker for students, offering free-of-cost services with all necessary features. Therefore, students should perform a plagiarism check by themselves on their academic work before submission.
In this way, students can learn about the areas of improvement that require changes. Moreover, students can avoid the penalties of plagiarism by analyzing their assignments by themselves.
Besides performing a simple check, students can attach a copy of the plagiarism report to their submission to ensure the authenticity of their work.
Conclusion
Academic writing is tiring when students have to manage multiple courses and adhere to deadlines for assignment submission. While working on the academic work, it becomes challenging to maintain the originality element when the time is limited.
With the help of editing and writing tools, the technology has covered various responsibilities. In this way, students can focus on being creative rather than duplicating information directly from a source.