5 ways to avoid plagiarism
Apart from knowing that Plagiarism is taking other people’s information and making it your own, its important to learn how best to avoid it. If you’re a writer, you know the pain of anyone taking your rightful work and making it their own. Plagiarism applies in websites, music, theses, books and all forms of publications.
WAYS TO AVOID PLAGIARISM
- Originality: - It pays to be original. Originality involves using your own words, style and format. One way of branding yourself is by maintaining originality as much as possible. People like reading information that is absolutely unique and different, something that stands exceptional. When you copy paste other people’s work, you affect your own brand.
- Paraphrase: - A good way to avoid plagiarism is by paraphrasing information. This is the act of using your own words as much as possible to explain an information you have read from other authors. If you must use the exact words, then you must include quotation marks to show direct information from an author. This should be followed by citing the source as well as the year of publication.
- Make an outline: - Whenever you are building content, the best way possible to do it is formulate an outline first which becomes the road map of your journey. Outline will aide you in organizing your thoughts in that you will not need to beat around the bush looking for what to say. This way your materials will flow freely from one point to another. This point is not directly attached to plagiarism but it keeps you away from being tempted to plagiarize.
- Referencing: - This is the act of giving authority to the sources used in a certain document. In academic writings eg theses and other academic papers, the author’s authority is not enough to present an argument and so research from different books, journals, documentaries, google scholar etc is highly recommended. Its of vital importance to reference all these sources in every quote and a inclusion of a reference page at the end of the document.
- Use a plagiarism checker: - The technology we have today has provided us with different methods of checking your work even before publishing it. Plagiarism checker will automatically check your information and will determine your originality and if there are similar phrases, sentences or paragraphs available elsewhere it will give an indication. This is a tool every publisher should invest in.
Become your own brand by maintaining a high degree of originality.
Paul.
Recent Comments
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Thanks Caroline. I think we were all at one time victims of plagiarism due to different reasons.
We had a great plagiarism checker when I took project management. They were absolute sticklers about any form of plagiarism. Loes is right but it's an art to turn it into original work, that's way using a checker is helpful. If I can dig up the one I used I'll share it.
We all use plagiarism, because we all get our info from somewhere and then re-write it in "our own original" words
Thanks Loes and you're absolutely right however you must avoid using people's work directly as yours. The truth is, we all must read and get information from others and its not a violation to use it in the right way and not plagiarise. Thanks for that input.
Thanks, Paul. I love being original; but sometimes I need more information than what is in my head. I always reword anything I use and I try not to use too much. Good post.
We must do research from other readers and as always it's a challenge for most of us to avoid using the same words. I love your desire to stay original and to do that you must use your own words. Thanks for your response.
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Thanks for the information.
You're welcome