Plagiarism is a serious offense for those who write academic papers, copying someone’s work and concepts and claiming the entire idea was theirs. This undesirable act can involve violating copyright laws and ethical standards. In the college world, full of research papers and studies, you should be well informed about the process of using someone’s work with proper citation, correct paraphrasing without jeopardizing yourself and facing serious legal matters.
If you are a student, your is the source for finding out everything you need to know about plagiarism but if you are seeking a more in-depth information, there are tons of information online of the problem and its legal consequences. Here, we offer you simple yet formally acknowledged tips for you on how to write without the possibility of committing plagiarism.
- Having enough time
One serious fact is that most students love rushing things. When their feet are on the verge of a deadline, the day before the submission, you will see them restlessly doing their designated task. Most students have their minds working well when in rush, as they don’t have time to procrastinate. Well, that’s okay if it works well with you. But not everyone can deliver a perfect paper last minute; maybe that’s the reason so many students pay for essay services.
However, if you don’t do it the last minute but have enough time, you can thoroughly read, edit, proofread, and fact-check your paper, improving your changes for a perfect grade. But when your time is limited, the danger is you will use the copy-paste method which is 100 percent plagiarism.
- Practice paraphrasing
No big research paper can do without different quotations, someone’s thoughts, smart people’s ideas and acknowledged concepts. Using these things in your paper is not forbidden unless you don’t mention that these ideas belong to someone else, not you. If you don’t use direct quotations, you need to paraphrase. This skill is important factor to avoid plagiarism. Remember, though, that even if you paraphrase, you still need to reference the source.
- Proper citation
You’ll be needing a lot of resources and references for sure, your professor should help you with proper citations. Listen and master the art of citation standard, so you’ll be safe and confident enough for your research paper. However, if there is the need of more knowledge about the proper citation, you can dig into learning about how to do it correctly online or at the library.
- Proofreading
Proofreading is the final stage before submitting or printing out your materials. After accumulating data, collating them and having yourself used the power of paraphrasing and adding your personal insight for your current studies, never let the paper be submitted without the process of finding and correcting errors. This is a huge help for you to avoid facing serious legal violations. Then, the first tip can be applied on this part. When you have an adequate time for your paper, you’ll never have to rush things so that creating a quality paper with the process of proofreading is never at stake.
- Use a plagiarism checker
Most of the time we are confident enough to submit our work without any amount of hesitation, knowing we did our best. Nonetheless, there is one way to know if your paper is plagiarism free. There are good-quality and highly dependable plagiarism checkers online that you can choose from. Such online tool can definitely make yourself even prouder and more confident about your work. Some professors use these tools to check their students’ works. Even if you are sure you wrote everything on your own and didn’t use anyone’s ideas, we still recommend you trying a plagiarism checker to be sure. There are so many written papers, essays and articles out there so you can never be sure that no one has said before the exact same words you used in your essay.
Those are very simply yet effective ways on how to avoid plagiarism. If you get to follow these easy steps or tips, your writing life as a researcher would be less stressful. One piece of advice, never hesitate to ask help if you think help from others is all you need. There are people out there who are always up for grab to extend their hands to you on your journey.