How To Avoid Plagiarism Online?

Date First Published: 24th April 2023

Topic: Computer Networking

Subtopic: Network Services

Computer Questions & Answers

Difficulty Level: 4/10

Learn about how to avoid plagiarism online in this article.

Plagiarism is becoming common when researching information online, especially in academic writing. Plagiarism is unethical and can result in consequences, like failing a module, receiving a lowered mark at university, and harming a student's reputation. If you plagiarise content online, you will often have trouble ranking high in the search results due to duplicate content.

This article is about how to avoid plagiarism online, not about how to check a page for plagiarism, so if you were looking for information on how to check a page for plagiarism, then this article does not apply to your question. Instead, you should see this article. Below are five ways to avoid plagiarism online.

1. Plan Your Document

The first thing that you should do to avoid plagiarism online is to plan your document and organise what you will write about. Create an outline of it before you start writing it and include the introduction, subheadings, questions, and conclusion. After planning, complete your research and fill your sections with that information. Without planning your document, you will usually end up writing in a very similar structure to another article on the Web.

2. Provide Citations

If you want to use text from another source, you should provide citations that mention the original source. You can provide the citation in a small number in brackets with a list of references at the bottom of the document, which is what Wikipedia does, or you can provide it in direct quotes (e.g. According to computerhelp4all.com, "Plagiarism is unethical and can result in consequences, like failing a module, receiving a lowered mark at university, harming a student's reputation.").

Providing citations does not only help to avoid plagiarism online. It can also make your work look more trustworthy because readers will know exactly where you are getting your information from.

3. Use A Plagiarism Checker

A plagiarism checker works by scanning the internet and determining whether those words already appear on the internet. When using a plagiarism checker, all you have to do is copy and paste your text in, upload your file, or enter the URL, and the check will then start. Once the check has finished, you will receive a percentage of the text plagiarised to the unique text.

Before you submit any work, it is recommended to use a plagiarism checker to scan your work for unoriginal content which may require citations. For more information about tools to check plagiarism, see this article. Most of these tools do have a 1000-word limit, but if you have a document longer than that, you can always check 1000 words at a time.

4. Don't Rush Your Document

Plagiarism commonly happens when people are in a rush. They will often research something and almost entirely copy something off the internet without contributing any of their own knowledge, thoughts, or opinions. Not rushing your document can help avoid plagiarism. Rushing work often happens when leaving things until last minute. Therefore, you should plan a time when you will write your document so that you won't be in a rush to write it.

5. Paraphrase Content

To avoid plagiarism, you can consider paraphrasing. This is the act of taking out key parts of an article and putting them into your own words. The structure of the sentences is modified and simpler language is used that has the same meaning. For example, a 1000-word article can be paraphrased into a few short paragraphs.

You might think of this as rewriting or "spinning" an article. But, it is not the same thing as article spinning. Article spinning is the act of rewriting large chunks of text or whole articles without taking any parts out or adding any new information, creating a duplicate version of the same article that just expresses exactly the same information in different words. When you paraphrase content, you only take small chunks out and express them in your own words.

6. Use Multiple Sources When Researching

If you only rely on one source when researching information, it is much harder to avoid plagiarism. This is because people often copy the structure of the single article they have read. To avoid this issue, rely on multiple sources when researching information and not just one source. You can paraphrase key information from multiple sources.

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