What is Plagiarism and How to Avoid it?

by Anne B. Robinson
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In this digital world, writing is considered a lucrative field, and many people try their luck and find their careers in it. However, not everyone finds a fortune in this domain, as writing is not a piece of cake. People hunt down tricks and tips to get started in this career, but they fail due to the lack of exposure to digital marketing. You should know that being a writer goes far beyond writing school or college essays if you want to pursue this career.

Many people confuse academic writing with content writing; there is a slight gap between these two, as the former is merely based on obtaining good grades while the latter is meant to capture the readers’ attention. However, there is one thing that writers need to ensure in both, i.e., uniqueness. No matter what writing you are working on, there is no room for plagiarism. You cannot afford to submit a text copied from another source as your own, as it can land you in serious trouble.

If you are new to writing, you’d probably be unaware of how plagiarism can haunt your life. You shouldn’t be worried anymore, as you have landed at the right spot. In this blog, we will help you discover the ways to detect plagiarism and how you can avoid it. Before we jump onto it, let us show you the dark side of plagiarism to help you understand why you need to prevent it. So let’s get started without any further delay! 

Consequences of Plagiarism

  • Deteriorates Authority

When working over the web, it takes ages to build your authority, but a single mistake can make all your efforts and hard work go in vain. The readers may show some leniency to grammatical or spelling errors, but the existence of plagiarism won’t be tolerated. If any reader discovers that your published article is plagiarized, it will become a nightmare for you. You’ll start receiving bad remarks/comments from the audience, and they may also damage your reputation by posting about this act on social networking sites. 

  • Leads to Failure in Academics

This consequence is suffered by students who think they are smart enough to submit copied assignments and get caught. Students’ life isn’t easy, as they have to manage multiple tasks in a short period, which leaves them to commit plagiarism in their assignments when the deadlines are approaching, and they are running out of time. However, no leverage is given to students, and they get failing grades if their submitted work is caught with plagiarism. 

  • Losing Clients

As a freelancer, you would know how hard it is to satisfy clients and make them trust you with long-term orders. However, if you deliver plagiarized text to your clients, they will abruptly end the contract with you, and you may also not receive the payment for that work. Losing clients can hurt your freelancing routine, and you might not be left with any orders. If you are working on a freelance platform like Upwork or Fiverr, dissatisfied clients may also leave a bad review that can hurt your profile and prevent you from receiving any other orders. 

How to Detect Plagiarism?

Now that you have understood how plagiarism can affect you let’s look into the ways that can help you detect plagiarism. 

  • Get Assistance from a Plagiarism Checker

Did you ever think that a tool could catch you cheating? Well, the job of a plagiarism checker is more or less the same. The plagiarism software identifies the instances of plagiarism from any kind of text instantaneously. The smart databases of the plagiarism tool will cross-check the text entered by the users with billions of web pages’ data to figure out if anything is duplicated from another source. To avoid plagiarism-related hassles, it’s recommended that all writers use an online plagiarism detector before submitting their work.

  • Look for Similar Articles

Another way of detecting plagiarism is by looking for similar articles in the niche you are working on. When you enter a single query in the search engines, hundreds of results from different websites are retrieved. Therefore, the topic on which you have written an article may be covered by other writers as well. While looking for similar pieces, you need to find the best matching articles and compare their text with the content you have written. This way, you may come across the exact-matching phrases or sentences in your content that should be replaced with something unique to avoid the repercussions of plagiarism. 

Ways to Get Rid of Plagiarism

After detecting plagiarism in one of the aforementioned ways, you must work on getting rid of it. Here are the two best ways to get rid of plagiarism. 

  • Come up with New Ideas

When you are looking forward to eliminating the instances of plagiarism, there is no better way than coming up with new ideas. Of course, it will take time, and you’ll have to conduct thorough research, but in the end, you’ll be confident that you have beaten plagiarism. It depends whether a few phrases are detected as plagiarized or the entire passage is replicated. When you figure it out, you can try discussing the same thing from a different angle. After doing this, when you’ll again check the content with a plagiarism checker, the text won’t be marked as plagiarized anymore. 

  • Use a Paraphrasing Tool

The usage of a paraphrasing tool can help you get rid of plagiarism like a boss. You can make use of a free paraphrasing tool and can generate content with existing text without any traces of plagiarism. The utility works on advanced algorithms that first understand the context of your uploaded text and returns a unique article based on the same context in a matter of seconds.  

Final Words

Technological advancement has made it easier for writers to detect and eliminate plagiarism. You must make sure to avoid plagiarism at all costs, as otherwise, you’ll have to face its negative consequences that can hurt your career badly.

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