4 Ways You Can Avoid Plagiarism In School

In today’s world, students can easily get information from the Internet. But such accessibility can make it easy for them to plagiarize research without any intention of doing so. Before you start on your research paper, you should read this article a little more closely so that you will not end up committing the mistake.

Creating The A+ Research Paper

Learn from different sources

It would be easier for you to avoid plagiarism if you get ideas from different sources. Relying on just one source may be easy, especially if you do not have much time to work on your project. But you will end up following just one idea. Reading from different sources will help you write down contrasting ideas because their authors might not agree with each other. You can present their ideas in your research paper.

Thus, you will produce a research paper that covers all sides of the story. It will make your work unique. Your professor will give you a good grade for it.      

Say it in your own words

Before you start writing down anything, you should read your source/s carefully. Study it. When you have finally grasped the message of your source, you are ready to write it down. Understanding the concept laid out in your source will help you write it in your own words. Keep the source nearby so don’t close that tab yet after you have read it. So if you find yourself lost, you can easily check your source.      

When you are paraphrasing, you have to make sure that you are not putting more than two words from the source into your research paper. This is where the thesaurus comes in handy because you can now easily replace one of the words with its synonym.     

Recognizing your source

Most customize writing experts suggest to recognize your source/s. Giving due cognizance of the author is an excellent way of avoiding plagiarism. It was mentioned earlier that you must avoid writing down more words from your source. If it cannot be avoided, then you must put the phrase or sentence in quotation marks. This way, your teacher will understand that you got such an idea from a reliable source. You must also jot down who the author is and the title of the book or article where you got the quotation. This is citation and it has several formats so you might ask your teacher what format to use for your research paper.      

Use the quotation marks

It has been mentioned in the previous paragraph that you can use a quote from your source. But it has to be enclosed in quotation marks. Also, you should not overdo this. Professors usually frown on block quotation. This is the process of copying a whole paragraph from your source. Although you have put the paragraph in quotation marks, your professor would most likely give you a bad grade for doing that. So again, we go back to paraphrasing. Doing this will not only help you avoid plagiarism. But it will tell your teacher that you understood what your source was saying.        

Plagiarism should be avoided by all means. You can easily create a unique content if you will follow these tips even if your topic has been researched by so many people. By doing this, your teacher will see that you have made an effort in doing the project. They will surely reward you for it.