Tips to Write Brilliant Plagiarism-Free Papers

Every time you get down to your essay, you should be mindful of plagiarism and know how to safeguard yourself from it.

16:14 24 August 2021

It’s a rare student who is not aware of the dangers posed by plagiarism. In the Information Age, originality and uniqueness of text is valued greatly, especially when it comes to academic writing. Most of the educational institutions have a zero-tolerance policy against plagiarized works. Such strict measures are directed at cultivating a respectful and ethical attitude towards other people’s intellectual property and encouraging learners to acquire knowledge in an honest and fair way. Therefore, every time you get down to your essay, you should be mindful of plagiarism and know how to safeguard yourself from it. 

 

Below are some useful tips that will help you not only avoid plagiarism in your work, but also format them correctly. 

 

Do Not Procrastinate 

You can hardly meet a single student in your campus that is not overloaded with coursework, some urgent project, say, about abortion or human rights, literary analysis essay, or other types of homework. College life can be really hard on you, and studying can be challenging, not to say unbearable, at times. Nevertheless, you should never succumb to the desire to put off your essay until some later time, as the majority of students tend to do. The plain truth is that you’re never going to pick that perfect studying day or find that perfect opportunity to fix your essay or put together a dissertation section. So, take care to tend to your assignments in good time. You may be surprised to know that lots of students resort to plagiarism when they are pressed for time. Such pressure and haste lead to not putting enough effort into paraphrasing used materials or giving proper credit to original authors. With this in mind, try your best to plan your research and writing process well in advance. Should there be any difficulty, you can always seek help from your teachers or other campus support staff. 

 

Cite Sources Properly 

Plagiarizing doesn’t always result from students’ inherent immorality or desire to work hard to get a good mark. Quite often, learners don’t know what plagiarism really is, especially at the beginning of their academic writing journey. Other students may not give enough thought to common citation rules, which may lead to improper citation or paraphrasing. Not to fall into similar pitfalls, you want to consult your citation guide or check out basic information on how to reference sources in common citation styles like MLA, Chicago, APS, etc. 

 

It’s critical that you avoid copying any text verbatim if you don’t format it as a direct quote and provide proper credit to its author. If you need to place a direct quote to support your argument, make sure that your quoted lines are exactly the way they appear in the original source. Alternatively, you can restate the ideas in your own words and reference the original source according to the rules of the formatting style you’re using.   

 

Note that you also should reference your previous work. Otherwise, it will be deemed plagiarized, and you will be certain to have serious problems because of self-plagiarism.    

 

What you don’t have to reference in your research papers are facts and common knowledge. Still, if you have some doubts, adding a reference won’t hurt. Also, there is no need to cite the evidence obtained as a result of your tests, surveys, or experiments. 

 

Use Plagiarism Checkers and Bibliography Machines 

The surest way to ascertain that your academic paper is unique and plagiarism-free is to rely on dedicated plagiarism detection programs, which are plentiful nowadays. Most plagiarism checkers allow you to check your paper online without any registration. There are also premium tools like Turnitin or Grammarly, which require registration and purchasing subscription. 

 

If you discover highlighted plagiarized areas after running a checker across your paper, consider rewriting them in order to avoid any penalties. At the same time, direct quotes will also be highlighted as plagiarisms, yet they won’t need any altering, as you know. 

 

Today, there are tons of auxiliary digital tools that can help you format your papers and correctly incorporate all in-text citations. Such tools as BibMe, Citation Machine, Zotero, EndNote, and others will spare you the bother of scanning through different citation and style guidelines and manually formatting your citations. All you need to do is specify a citation style, your source’s name, as well as your author’s name, its publication year, page number, if required, and the program will automatically generate the correct citation for you. 

 

Hope these simple tips will help you create strong and highly informative papers deserving of the highest grade.