Looking to avoid plagiarism in your work? Here's our essential student's guide

 

In academia, and other parts of life, it is important that you avoid plagiarism in your written work. Plagiarism is best defined as: ‘the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own’.

 

Obviously, that is quite a blatant way to commit plagiarism, but there are also other, more subtle ways that you could accidentally find yourself plagiarising someone else’s work. With universities enlisting the help of plagiarism services such as Turnitin, it is far easier for institutions to detect it. 

Don’t fall foul of the rules, make sure you read our guide on how to avoid plagiarism.

Give yourself plenty of time to write

 

You’re more likely to accidentally plagiarise when you are in a rush to complete an assignment before a deadline. You may not even notice that you are doing it in most cases, as you are just in such a rush to get your stuff done. Make sure you give yourself the best chance possible and give yourself plenty of time to research your topic fully. 

Don’t just copy and paste

 

It can be tempting to just copy and paste things, especially if you think that you’re going to fall short of the word count. Copying a quote in quotation marks directly is fine, but make sure it isn’t too long. Also, avoid copying and pasting anything else, such as analysis or options of quotes and facts, as this is the work of someone else.

Cite correctly

 

One of the best reasons that students fall foul of plagiarism regulations is because they have either forgotten to reference something in their essay, or they haven’t referenced correctly. Make sure that you cite things correctly by checking the style guide of your referencing format, and make use of sites such as citethisforme and mybib. They’ll make things a lot easier and help you to get things right in the first place.

This is how you can avoid plagiarism in your academic work

 

You now understand how important it is to not plagiarise someone else’s work, so as long as you follow our advice, you should be able to avoid getting in to trouble with your academics over your work.

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