How often do you write? Do you write for a living or as a part of your study curriculum or Just to seize a particular memory or idea in your head on paper? Whatever the reason is there are so many rules and tips to be followed to make your work perfect. One rule in the list is No Plagiarism. Plagiarism is an overwhelming subject to talk about. But as a writer, you must check plagiarism and deliver high-quality content.
What is Plagiarism?
Plagiarism is passing off or stealing others ideas and using them without crediting them. In current culture, copy-and-paste may not seem like a big issue but it can put you in a serious problem at both professional or academic front. Intentional or unintentional usage of someone else’s work without proper citation will never do any good for your content and business.
Plagiarism is an ethical issue as a writer it becomes a matter of your integrity. Unintentional plagiarism can, however, be explained but what about intentional plagiarism. When the other party finds out they may even take a legal action against you, which is not good for your career.
If you post plagiarized content, you will lose respect among peers and mentors. Not only that it may cost you many future careers advancing offers causing you both professional and financial loss. If don’t want to be in such a situation, then you must avoid plagiarism in your writing.
Here are a few effective tips that can help you in avoiding plagiarism in your writing.
Understand Plagiarism
The important mistake writers commit is they don’t understand plagiarism correctly. It takes many forms and to avoid it one must understand all the forms. How can you improve yourself when you don’t know your mistake in the first place. Understand plagiarism and then evaluate your writing to make it Plagiarism-free.
Common types of Plagiarism
Find & Replace: Replacing a few phrases and words from others work and use it as yours.
Copy & Paste: Copying someone else’s work verbatim without any citation for the original source.
Self-Plagiarism: Reusing the previous work of your organisation or yours, without any permission from a current instructor.
Sharing Work: This mainly applies to students, sharing and submitting others work as theirs and vice versa.
Improper Citing: Failing to give accurate citation to the original source or not giving credit to the right source.
Ghost Citation: Making up fake source and giving citation to that particular source.
Remix: Mixing up multiple people’s work and present it as your own.
Purchasing: Purchasing content from others and presenting it as your own.
Take your time
Best way to avoid Plagiarism is taking a good amount of time to finish writing a topic. When you’re rushed you may miss something or your focus will completely be on finishing the work rather than maintaining quality. So, take your time to research the topic and get adequate knowledge of it. Pressure can lead to mistakes, so avoid last-minute rush and plan your content way ahead. Prepare strong reference material to support all the claims in your topic. Remember good research content will automatically lead to great writing.
Citation
It is important to add a citation when you’re using someone else’s work. You have to face lots of complications when you don’t cite the original source. It is ok to take inspiration from others work but not giving credit to them is not acceptable. So, when taking certain information from another author remember to cite their source in your writing.
Sometimes we may end up giving credit to the wrong person, to avoid such situations you must check or double-check whether you’re giving credits to the right person or not. In citation also add the full name of the source, data on which it was published and any other important elements required by your guide.
Quote & Paraphrase
One of the most simple ways to avoid getting Plagiarised is using quotation marks to mark the text of others. Quotes in your writing simply represent that particular text is not yours. It doesn’t take a lot of time to do it and you can do it as soon as you write them. Paraphrasing means rewording a sentence without losing its original meaning. This is another way to avoid plagiarism in your writing.
When you find any particular idea interesting and suitable for your topic, you can rewrite it in your own words without defying the original meaning. Remember if not done properly your work may slip into plagiarism. To be on the safer side add a citation to the original source too.
Plagiarism Checker
When you’re performing research for a particular topic, some lines, phrases or words stay with you and unintentionally you would use them in your content while writing. It becomes hard to locate each one of them and give them a citation, especially if your content is long. So, in such situations it is better to take the help of online plagiarism checker tools will help you in checking and resolving such issues before submitting your content.
Many online plagiarism checker tools scan your text and give you a detailed report of which sentence, phrase or words of your content are plagiarised. Some even identify and give you the original text along with the plagiarized text. All these suggestions will help you in avoiding plagiarism and eventually overcome it.
Own Ideas
If you want your content to be authentic then you should stop relying on other ideas or words. When you decide to write about a particular topic, then add value to that topic and think of ways to make it your own. While researching, take your time to ask yourself what is the unique point or perspective from which you can present this topic to make it different from others.
There are hundreds of articles written on a particular topic, it is up to you to find a unique perspective to make it truly yours. Remember you must also see that it doesn’t end up being self-plagiarised i.e., recycle of your previous content.
Reference page & Internet
You can also avoid plagiarism by including a reference page at the end of your content. This is just a complete list of your research and it helps you in making a decision on which content to include and which to avoid. Do it parallelly with your research if you’re doing it after finishing your writing then there are high chances of missing something.
It is important to cite even if you have taken that particular information from the internet. It is important to cite credit to the original owner even if the content is taken from the internet. You can also take suggestions from your mentor whether or not adding a citation and reference page important or not. It is better to go prepared for any situation.
Conclusion
If writing is your day job, then you must be careful while writing as there are many rules you should abide by. Plagiarism is one such matter that you should be extremely careful about. It can seriously affect your future career opportunities. So do everything you can to avoid such a situation. Avoiding Plagiarism is not hard, a little extra care while writing and proofreading can save your day. Now there are many online plagiarism tools available in the market that will help you in locating the plagiarized content and change them.
