6 Ways to Avoid College Essay Plagiarism and Its' Consequences

At some point, every student fears arising issues of college essay plagiarism, and it’s natural. This happens since all schools, colleges, and universities assign lots of academic papers. Such assignments are an essential part of every educational program. It helps teachers to test students’ knowledge, research, and analytical skills. However, written tasks are much more challenging than they may appear.

While writing academic papers, students come across numerous difficulties. However, plagiarism has always been one of the biggest obstacles on their way to the desired A+! Unfortunately, cases of unoriginality become way too frequent in colleges. Is there any way to avoid this? In this article, we are going to give you a few tips!

Top 7 Ways to Tackle the Issue

So, how can one write really original texts? Here are the key factors for success:

1. Research and understand the topic. Probably the only way to write a unique text is to have a deep understanding of what you are writing about. Thus, we encourage you always to conduct in-depth research and try to get to the bottom of the question! If you do this, you will be able to disclose a topic in your own words.
2. Paraphrasing, rewriting the information in your own words, is another effective way to ensure uniqueness. The idea is quite simple – research, read the relevant information, and then put it into different words ensuring that no more than two words in a row match the original source!
3. Learn to cite sources correctly. Citing is probably the most annoying part of writing an academic paper. However, improper citations can cause lots of issues with plagiarism, so we recommend students to take as much time as it takes to ensure that they’ve cited every source properly. When citing sources, make sure to follow the correct guidelines. Also, note that even taking ideas from your past papers requires citing!
4. Include a reference page. This is another simple way to ensure uniqueness. Just make sure that you include every source that was used in a properly-formatted page of references.
5. Find a reliable plagiarism checker. No matter how hard you try to avoid plagiarism, it is vital to check the result. Thus, we recommend finding a good tool that shows an accurate result. For example, some of the most popular tools today are Grammarly (only available in premium subscription), Unicheck, PlagTracker, etc.

6. Ask for help if you can’t do it yourself. Whether you are running short on time or just can’t write an original text, we recommend using reliable services that offer expert help. For example, you can follow this link in order to find someone to write your essay online: https://essaypro.com/write-my-essay.html. HRs at EssayPro employ only professional writers and editors. These guys can run uniqueness checks for you and even edit your paper to make it worth the highest assessment.

Have You Ever Heard of Turnitin?

If you have never heard of it before, Turnitin is another plagiarism detection tool. What makes it stand out among the other tools? Here is one thing you need to know about it – Turnitin is known as one of the most effective solutions for identifying unoriginal content. Thus, many professors and teachers from different educational institutions use this software to grade papers.

This tool is also beneficial for students. Apart from helping professors to determine the originality of written assignments, it also teaches the student how to work with sources more effectively and helps to boost their quoting and paraphrasing skills.

And here is one more tip – sometimes, even when a specific school doesn’t require its employees to use Turnitin, most teachers still interact with it in some way. This is because this tool is very convenient and provides accurate scores. Thus, if you want to be 100% confident of your papers’ originality, you might want to scan it with Turnitin!

What Are the Most Common Consequences of Plagiarism?

Most often, students resort to such measures due to a constant lack of time and prevalence of pressure. Of course, when you are running short on time, copying someone else’s papers may seem to be a simple and reliable solution. However, is it really the right solution? Not at all and here is why – copied papers never get high scores. As a rule, students, who were accused of plagiarism receive low grades and may even get expelled as it is considered a form of cheating.

By the way, this issue is relevant not only for students! Even established specialists make similar mistakes and have to put up with not less disappointing consequences. For example, marketers who publish duplicate content often have to deal with low rankings and search engines’ penalties. As you can see, copied content can’t do any good regardless of your situation!

Final Words

Of course, plagiarism is quite a multifaceted and a complex issue. Citing sources, creating a correct list of references, and paraphrasing – this all takes lots of time and effort. No wonder why so many students find it hard to avoid. However, the effort always pays off! Thus, do not neglect the importance of submitting unique papers and do your best to avoid plagiarism!

I used to study Organizational and Industrial Psychology at Montclair State University and graduated in 2017. I currently work as a freelance writer and academic coach.