How to Avoid or Remove Plagiarism in 5 Easy Steps

Academic papers, especially the research ones are always quite a task. Due to their time-consuming nature, a student is always left with the temptation to just get information from the net, copy-paste, or simply twist and submit as their own. Others find quick solutions for plagiarism such as cheating Turnitin using dubious ways.

Quick fix, right?

Except, this is never a quick fix.

Plagiarism is a serious crime and it will leave you in such a tight spot. Your professor may forgive you for getting some aspects of your assignment wrong, but he will not forgive you for plagiarizing your paper. I wrote this guide to help you avoid or remove plagiarism in any paper be it a research paper, term paper, essay, or any other assignment. But before I show you how to remove plagiarism, let’s take a look at the reason why plagiarism is considered a crime.

Why plagiarism is considered a crime? What’s the big deal anyway?

Plagiarism is stealing

In basic terms, plagiarism is stealing. It is taking credit for the hard work done by someone else. When you fail to attribute someone’s work, it basically means that you have taken it as your own. The academic field has ethics. Plagiarism is acting against this ethics.

Plagiarism doesn’t show your mastery of a topic

Lecturers will often give you an assignment so that they can gauge your understanding of it. Getting it wrong means you have tried, but more efforts are needed to ensure you perfect your understanding of it. Plagiarizing your work means you did not even bother to give it a try.

Plagiarism destroys your integrity

Being a person of integrity is important for human beings. Well…at least most of us. Plagiarizing your work makes you to be seen as a person of no integrity. This means it can cost you work opportunities. It can even lead to closure of career advancement doors. Apart from losing a grade, plagiarism can also lead to you losing financial aid. Imagine losing a privilege to be in leadership because you plagiarized your work. Devastating, right?

Plagiarism means you did not work on your paper

Lecturers do not give you assignment just because they have nothing better to do. They want to train you. They want to understand your strengths and your weaknesses. They want to see you in an assignment. Plagiarizing your work basically removes the purpose of the assignment.

Legal trouble

Plagiarism can land you in legal trouble. This is especially when the original author decides to take legal action against you. You really do not want to get entangled on a legal suit as a result of plagiarizing something.

How to remove plagiarism in any paper

Having understood the dangers of plagiarism, it is important to learn how to avoid plagiarism and remove any plagiarism you find before submitting your work for grading or publishing. There are several ways to remove plagiarism (If you have already written your paper, skip to the point 4 “Use plagiarism checker”)

Paraphrase everything

To avoid plagiarism, paraphrase every claim that you obtained during research. When doing research, it is very tempting to just write something as you find it online, or just change a few words. However, proper paraphrasing includes reading through a text, analyzing the idea in it, and rewriting it in your own words. To effectively paraphrase a text, ensure that you use very few words that have been used in the original text. After paraphrasing, compare the two texts and make any necessary corrections.

Example of paraphrasing

Original text:

If your schedule the next morning is too tight and the time allowance you have is too little, try and jumpstart your mind to work on the assignment. With the right amount of adrenaline, you can run for much longer than you expect

Paraphrased text:

If you have too much to work on the following morning or the lecturer has allocated very limited time for the assignment, then you have no option but make your mind sober up and start working. You have no idea how much your mind can do when it understand that there’s no other option.

Proper citation

Proper citation will save you a lot. During research, ensure that you save each of your sources. This will make it easier for you to remember every source you may have used. Sometimes we forget the sources used, and end up accidentally presenting the information as our own, leading to plagiarism. Every information that you have received from elsewhere apart from your mind should be attributed to the original author. If you quote something you had written in the past, you should cite yourself too in order to avoid self-plagiarism. Citation is not just for book and journals. Every source you use, be it a book, a webpage, or even a blog post should be properly cited. Citation is often done in two ways:

At the end of the work. Add a reference page at the end of your paper with a full citation including author’s name, year or publication, title of the article, volume, edition, among others depending on the paper format or style

In-text citations. This is citation inside the article. Whenever you quote or paraphrase a text, you ought to cite it.

Read the article the process of citing an academic paper using different writing styles to understand how to properly cite a paper and avoid plagiarism

Use your own ideas

Instead of checking online for ideas presented by other people, why don’t you look deep inside yourself and get an original idea?

You have no idea just how much is within you, if you really take time to look within.

It is especially very important when working on a thesis paper to come up with an idea by yourself. Ask yourself what uniqueness you can show in your paper.

Use plagiarism checker to check if there is plagiarism once you finish writing your paper

Before submitting your paper for grading or publishing, it is important to confirm if there are incidences of plagiarism in you text. Check your paper for plagiarism using some of the popular plagiarism checkers such as Turnitin and Grammarly Premium. The app will compare your document to what is found online, then show the originality percentage of your work. Your work should be at least 85% original. If not, it is recommended for you to rewrite in order to remove plagiarism in areas of your text with plagiarism incidences.

The good thing with plagiarism checker is that it shows you parts of your paper that are similar to a document found online, making it easy for you to correct your work.

Rewrite plagiarized parts

The importance of using turnitin is so that you can rewrite the plagiarized sections, until plagiarism falls to zero. Go through the text again, understand the main point you wanted to express, then rewrite that particular piece of text without referring to the plagiarized text.

These are just few ways on how you can avoid and remove plagiarism in your text. However, it takes intentional efforts and practice to completely do away with plagiarism. Learn how to present an idea in different ways. Train yourself how to read something, internalize it, then write it down in your own words. Though it takes time, learning how to remove and completely avoid plagiarism is totally worth it.