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4 Tips for Students: How to Avoid Plagiarism in Your Writing

by Louise W. Rice
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Plagiarism is the practice of presenting other people’s works and ideas as your own, intentionally or accidentally. It can be a serious issue with many consequences, such as having your written paper rejected and being portrayed as a fraud. Writing an original story is complicated, but it is much better than using someone else’s work.

Students write many papers in the course of one semester with the aim of creating and speaking their own minds and voices. Before sending the papers in, students have to perform a detailed check using a plagiarism checker for their writing, making sure their piece of work is original. Using such a tool is essential for any student in order to showcase the quality of the paper.

Avoiding plagiarism is among the most important things, as you want your work to be well-praised and get the highest grade at the end of the semester. In this article, you will find 4 easy ways how to avoid plagiarism in your writing.

1. Make a plan

Before you start writing, prepare a plan as it is the most essential part of avoiding plagiarism. If you plan on using other sources for obtaining information, make sure you know how to include them in the paper. Basically, you need to think about how to connect your own ideas with the ideas you get from other research and information you find in books or online. Prepare an outline or write a thesis statement where you clearly show how you plan to establish the boundaries between your own ideas and the information from the rest of the sources.

2. Take notes

When doing research, take notes from the sources you want to use and write down the information you plan to use. This way, you will know how and when to include this information. On the other hand, if your note-taking is not at a satisfactory level, then you can make plenty of citation or referencing mistakes, and this is considered a form of plagiarism.

On a separate piece of paper, write all the information you got from the research and add the page source. This will help you with your citations throughout the writing process. This way, you will practice note-taking and next time you have to use it, you will be more than prepared for this process.

3. Learn to cite and add references

Nowadays, everyone relies on the Internet for gathering information on any topic they may think of. It offers a vast choice of journals, articles, and eBooks (which have become very popular), so it makes the research process easier and you can gather a lot of information in a shorter period of time instead of visiting the library. However, whatever information you find and want to use in your paper, you have to reference the source.

That is why you have to learn the process of citation. To cite a source properly, you have to add the author’s name, the title of the paper where you found the information, the page number, and the publishing date of the paper. At the end of every written paper, there has to be a page where you can cite all the references you used in your work.

4. Get interested in the topic you are writing about

In order to create a quality, educational paper, you need to get interested in the topic you are writing about. Students who are not interested in the topic they need to write about tend to turn to plagiarism. They do not conduct thorough research and do not put in the necessary effort needed to learn new things and discover quality sources for the paper. In this case, they may consider using a college essay generator.

So, before you begin with writing, try to find at least three aspects of interest in your topic of writing. This way, you will get more excited about the upcoming research, and you can also add some facts you think would be captivating for the reader and make the process of writing even more satisfying for you. This is the right path to creating the perfect, most original written paper possible.

Final thoughts

If you do not take the necessary steps to create an original essay, writing can be a difficult task to perform. Be excited, find interesting topics to write about, and always strive to be as original as possible. You can do that by doing your own research on the topic, citing reliable sources, and making a combination of your own ideas with the references you find.

In the end, always make sure you run the written paper through a plagiarism checker, so you are absolutely certain of the authenticity of your paper.

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