Plagiarism is a serial killer that killed the career of thousands of students in almost every corner of the world. Avoid plagiarism throughout your academic career and good news is that avoiding plagiarism is not a tricky thing to handle. You can do it quite easily if you follow some expert advice or techniques.

Why do Students Plagiarize Normally?

Most of the time, students plagiarized because they waste most of their time on fun activities and start their assignment, paper, or thesis at the eleventh hour. At that moment, there seems no solution but copy-pasting someone else’s work to complete the task within the due date. But keep it in mind, failing in one assignment is better than failing the whole career.

Easy Tips to Avoid Plagiarism

Well, you can always avoid plagiarism by following the tips we are going to mention. Hope these tips will serve as a guideline to avoid plagiarism throughout your academic career:

1. Paraphrase

The most common way to avoid plagiarism is to paraphrase the source. For example, if the sentence is: “a man served me coffee.” You can paraphrase it like this: “I was served a hot beverage by the man”. Now we paraphrased the sentence and no plagiarism checker will be able to detect the plagiarism though the meaning is still the same, just words and the sentence structure is changed.

So you can similarly paraphrase any text to avoid plagiarism. You can do it sentence by sentence if you have a good time. But if the time is short, then obviously, paraphrasing line by line won’t make it in time. You will have to play smart then and the smartest way would be to use some online paraphraser which is based on AI and NLP.

Why AI or NLP-Based Paraphrasing Tool is Necessary?

AI and NLP-based online paraphrasing tool paraphrase text like real humans do and the result is more readable and fluent. These intelligent tools will get the task done in just minutes and the plus point is that there won’t be any plagiarism issues.

2. Add Citations

Citing the source is another way to avoid plagiarism. If you have to mention some study, research, or fact found by someone else, the best way is to cite the source appropriately. It will tell your teachers or the reader that whatever fact or study you have mentioned is not your work, rather you took it from another source that you already mentioned.

Citing doesn’t remove plagiarism from your content but it takes away the chance of getting caught or getting blamed for cheating or plagiarism. So, learn how to cite properly if you want to use someone else’s work in your academic writing.

3. Add Quotation Marks

Copying exact words from some source can put you and your academic career in hot water. Quotation marks can be a lifesaver. If you are copying exact words from another source, add quotation marks so that the reader may easily get the idea that these are not your words but rather you took it from another source.

Add quotation marks even if you don’t know the source. You would have seen some online posts where people add quotes on their timeline but at source, they mention “unknown source”. It adds credibility and respect but they accepted the fact that these were not their words rather they copied it and the source is unknown to them.

4. Use Plagiarism Checker

Plagiarism checkers are often online tools though you can find various desktop software as well that can help in checking plagiarism in your academic writings. Well whatever type of plagiarism checker you use, the purpose is the same. You will put your content or writing in questions and this tool will tell if there’s any plagiarism in it or not.

If the plagiarism checker will find any plagiarism, it will highlight that sentence, paragraph, or phrase. You can easily pick those sentences, lines, or paragraphs and rephrase them to remove plagiarism from your work. So plagiarism checker not only checks plagiarism but it helps in removing that by highlighting the plagiarized part which can be paraphrased later.

5. Start in Time and Use Your Own Words

Though we already discussed four tips to avoid plagiarism, the best idea is to start your academic writing early so that you may not have to find quick ways to write. And write your own words so that there would be almost zero chance of plagiarism.

Writing your assignment, paper or thesis gives you a chance to challenge your studies and utilize whatever you have learned during the course. If you will complete your assignments or thesis with tricks, you won’t be able to judge what you learned from your college or university. So give yourself proper time and use your own words while writing your paper or thesis.

Takeaway

There can be other useful tips to avoid plagiarism like adding a reference page at the end of your academic writing or proofreading etc. but we have mentioned the top 5 tips that will be helpful. 

You can mention these tips somewhere where you can always read whenever you sit to write. These can be your guidelines and hence your academic career will be shiny without any blob of plagiarism.