When you present someone else’s work or ideas as your own, it constitutes plagiarism. Plagiarizing someone’s work is committing literary theft and fraud. As a part of your coursework, you will be required to write multiple project reports, essays, thesis, and other homework assignments. Before you start writing, you should know how to check plagiarism for the same. 

What is considered plagiarism?

Plagiarism can be both intentional as well as unintentional. You might accidentally copy someone else’s words without realizing that you are committing intellectual theft. Even if the plagiarism is unintentional, it can get you into trouble when caught.

Before you learn how to check plagiarism, it is important to understand what constitutes plagiarism. 

1. Submitting someone else’s work as your own
2. Presenting ideas without giving credit to the original author
3. Providing incorrect or false credits
4. Paraphrasing without giving due credit  
5. Including quotations without quotation marks
6. Submitting portions of your earlier work as a part of a new assignment

The first five kinds of plagiarism constitute direct plagiarism whereas the last one is self-plagiarism. You might think copying your earlier work for a different assignment is not wrong or improper. You might be the original author of the content. However, if you have used the work once, you should use it in a new paper or assignment only after giving due credit to the original work. 

Plagiarism can be found in both academic as well as professional settings. Whether it is in school, college, research institutes, or the corporate world, you can come across content that is unethically copied. That’s where how to check plagiarism can help you.

Why do students plagiarize? 

There can be multiple reasons why you might indulge indirect or self-plagiarism. However, the consequences of either can be adverse. In addition to being embarrassed in front of your professors and peers, you may also be subject to suspension or failing the course. However, some of the top reasons for plagiarism include:

• The temptation to copy and paste material for your assignments when you are running short of time.
• Lack of sufficient subject knowledge and understanding you might think copying material will make your assignment better
• Poor writing skills, confusing homework assignments, laziness, convenience, etc.
• Lack of knowledge on how to check plagiarism and therefore be unable to correct your mistake 

Ideally, your university or college should have a formal policy regarding plagiarism to avoid confusion. Besides a well-publicized policy, your institute should also have classes or sessions where rules of academic writing are taught including how to check plagiarism. 

How to avoid plagiarism?

You can follow a few easy tips to avoid plagiarism in your writings. To cite correctly, you need to keep a track of all the sources and reference materials that you are using. Maintain good quality notes of the sources to avoid accidental plagiarism. If you are using a direct quote from another author’s work, ensure that it is enclosed in quotation marks. Avoid using a large number of direct quotes and wherever you use them use proper referencing. 

Need to check plagiarism

When you run your work through a plagiarism checker you can verify whether the content you are submitting is your intellectual property or not. When you are quoting multiple authors in your academic writing, you are bound to make some errors in giving the due credit. These small mistakes can cost you a lot in terms of grades and your academic career. When you use a plagiarism checker you can be sure that you have not missed out on citing any source. Knowledge of how to check plagiarism is very important.

How to check plagiarism with a plagiarism detector?

There are various tools and software available on the internet that can be used to detect plagiarism. These tools can be both free as well as paid. For detecting plagiarism accurately, you need to learn how to check plagiarism using the available software. First of all, you should understand how the software runs, what all input has to be provided, and how the results should be evaluated. Some of the widely available tools to check plagiarism include the ones created by Grammarly, EduBirdie, DupliChecker, CopyLeaks, CopyScape, etc.

In most of these tools, the procedure of checking plagiarism is similar. You have to insert the content to be checked in the text box or can upload the whole document. Once this is done, you have to click on scan now or check now and the software will begin the process of checking your content. Once the plagiarism detection tool has run its full course, a report will be generated by which you can assess whether the content is plagiarized or not.

Though running your content through an online plagiarism checker might seem easy, it will not yield the desired results unless you know how to check plagiarism. Your text might have some general words/phrases or some technical terms/jargon that the plagiarism checking software might flag as plagiarism. As a result, your content will show a high percentage of plagiarism even though it might not be plagiarized. Therefore, you need to go through the text line by line carefully to check for plagiarism. This requires a large amount of manual effort and time.

Some platforms provide plagiarism-checking services. Here your content is checked by professional writers who have in-depth knowledge of the rules and standards to be followed in academic writing. These writers know how to check plagiarism in different types of writing such as essays, technical reports, thesis, lab reports, etc. Taking help from a professional academic editing service for checking plagiarism will ensure that the work you submit is 100% free from plagiarism. TutorBin also helps you with provide plagiarism-free services.

Plagiarism free work with TutorBin

If checking plagiarism seems cumbersome you can use professional writing services by TutorBin, You can easily get content that is 100% original and free from plagiarism. This is possible as the writers onboard TutorBin know how to check plagiarism. When you get an essay or an assignment written by expert writers, the end product is well-written, thoroughly researched, grammatically correct, and plagiarism-free. Although these services might look to be expensive, they are quite budget-friendly.