Content writing is challenging. It requires spending hours researching the data, creating the outline, and conducting the writing process. Despite these efforts, the content created sometimes unintentionally falls victim to plagiarism. Why is that?
Well, it’s simple; people don’t know what falls under the umbrella of plagiarism. This problem leads back to the fact that many individuals lack a clear understanding of what plagiarism is. So, if you are one of them, you should check out this blog post.
In this blog topic, we’ll help you avoid the threat of plagiarism by discussing 5 of the best practices ever. But before getting to this, we’ll first clarify your concept about plagiarism and why you should care about its avoidance. So, let’s dive into this discussion without wasting any time.
Plagiarism means copying someone else’s words or even ideas and passing them off as one’s property. Suppose you replicate the exact outline or use a text portion from an existing source without any permission or proper acknowledgment. In such a situation, your content will fall prey to plagiarism.
Now, onto the big question: why is plagiarism wrong? Well, to understand this, picture a scenario. Imagine you spend hours, days, and even weeks writing a content piece, but after publishing it, someone else gets all the credit for your work. You’ll probably feel betrayed and robbed because despite putting in all the hard yards, you don’t get the applause you deserve or the opportunity to maintain your creativity. So, that’s how everyone feels when their work is being plagiarized.
But that’s just one and the simplest side of the picture; there are various other reasons for avoiding plagiarism. The following points provide a brief explanation of them:
When you avoid plagiarism, you follow the academic integrity standards, which eventually help you build trust and credibility.
Committing plagiarism, especially in law-related disciplines, often results in various legal consequences. So, by eliminating the threat of plagiarism there, you can save yourself from all those severe legal consequences.
To avoid plagiarism, it is essential to understand the source first. However, you can only gain an understanding of something if you think critically about it and use your creativity. So, eliminating the threat of plagiarism will ultimately sharpen your creative writing and critical thinking skills.
You may have understood the concept of what is plagiarism and the need to avoid it. If so, that’s good. However, the first two sections just cover the theoretical perspective of this blog post. So, now, let’s get to the practical angle: How to avoid plagiarism?
You’ve located plagiarism in your text, and now, you want to remove those traces. But you don’t know where to begin? Well, if this sounds like you, the first practical thing you need to do is start rewording your content.
This doesn’t only mean changing the vocabulary but also altering the order of wording within sentences. So, implement this technique by following these suggestions:
Use contextually relevant synonyms.
Original: We need to ensure that the project is completed on time.
Synonyms: We must guarantee that the project is finished on schedule.
Replace phrases with suitable alternatives.
Original: We need to ensure that the project is completed on time.
Phrase Modification: It’s essential that we wrap up the project on time.
Change the construction of sentences.
Original: We need to ensure that the project is completed on time.
Sentence Reconstruction 1: To complete the project on time, we must ensure everything is in order.
Sentence Reconstruction 2: The project must be completed on time by us.
But make sure to gather the context of the plagiarized portion first. This way, you’ll be able to make more relevant changes. However, if you have trouble implementing any of the recommendations, you can get help from a rewording tool.
With the support of such a utility, you don’t need to spend time understanding the text’s meaning. Simply enter your plagiarized section into this tool and execute the process. Within seconds, you’ll get a completely reworded version of your plagiarized portion with better readability and engagement.
Rewording the plagiarized portions may make it unique, but it doesn’t give you ownership of the original version. So, once you’ve reworded the plagiarized sections of your text, it’s time to credit the original information owner. Cite sources properly otherwise, the reworded content will still be an example of plagiarism, regardless of how different it looks.
To acknowledge the original owner of the information, you first need to choose a citation style. Two of the most common ones are as follows:
MLA.
APA.
So, pick whichever style your organization or institute generally uses. Then, mention an in-text citation alongside your reworded information. Here is an example of an in-text citation:
[Your reworded text will go here](Johnson 45)
[Your reworded text will go here](Johnson, 2021, p. 45)
After that, link your in-text citation with a complete reference at the end of your document. Here is the complete form of the above-mentioned in-text citations:
Johnson, Emily. The Art of Ethical Writing. New York: Harper Press, 2021.
Johnson, E. (2021). The art of ethical writing. Harper Press.
By implementing this approach with rewording, you will truly be able to eliminate the threat of plagiarism from your content. But make sure that your citation style is consistent throughout your text. Otherwise, even including the correct references will ruin the quality of your work.
Sometimes, rewording ruins the essence of the text. This especially happens with famous sayings, quotes, or poetries. So, if that’s the case, you can still keep your work away from plagiarism by including quotations. However, this technique is only effective for small text portions. So, avoid overusing it.
To get started with the inclusion of quotations, you first need to use text verbatim for the content piece you intend to incorporate in your work. Then, you need to enclose the words of copied text with the help of double quotes (“ ”). Here is an example that best showcases how a content piece included with quotations looks like:
Emily Johnson emphasizes the importance of originality in writing, stating, “Authentic content not only builds trust with your audience but also reinforces your credibility as a writer” (Johnson, 2021, p. 23).
As you can see in the above example, the text portion within double quotes indicates that we’ve taken it from somewhere else. To guide the readers about the origin of quoted information, we’ve also specified the in-text citation. So, that’s how you can include quotations to eliminate plagiarism from your work. But don’t forget to add the complete reference of the included in-text citation. Otherwise, your content will suffer from incomplete referencing issues, which is a sort of plagiarism.
Rewording and quoting are two of the most effective ways to overcome plagiarism in a text piece of any niche. However, overusing them may make readers feel that your content lacks originality. So, to avoid such situations, it is also essential to present your ideas.
We humans are different from each other because each of us has different views and thinks differently about things. So, use this to your advantage and re-elaborate the plagiarized section using your creativity. You can also use this strategy to add something new to your topic. But for that, you will have to conduct research. So, start early and research your content extensively.
Additionally, you can get assistance from relevant examples, analogies, facts, and figures to enrich your content with your ideas. Doing so will undoubtedly add a unique factor to your text and prepare it to shine in the world.
After applying all the aforementioned methods, you may have formulated a unique text piece. But how can you check that? Well, to do so, use our final practical suggestion, which is to run your content into a plagiarism checker before finalizing it.
Such a tool has already been programmed with the support of extensive databases and advanced technologies, like deep search. This way, it can quickly verify any text piece for originality and discover any underlying hidden plagiarized sections. So, you can use it to take the guesswork out of the situation and find out the unoriginal portions of your work before someone else. By reworking the plagiarized sections, you can eliminate any future issues.
To sum things up, there is no doubt that plagiarism is a serious offense with severe consequences. But with the proper practices in place, you can easily avoid this problem. A few of the most effective approaches are using your ideas, rewording the content, incorporating double quotes, and properly citing the sources. However, after implementing these strategies, you should also check duplication before finalizing. This way, you can discover any hidden plagiarized traces and take action accordingly before moving on.
Rewording Tool
