How to avoid plagiarism in an essay

What are the ways to avoid plagiarism in an essay?

With the advancement of internet, it has become easier for the students to gain knowledge through their fingertips. Internet is a powerful resource which will help a student in all aspects.

With these advantages, there are also few of the disadvantages that come with it. It is now become common when a student finds answers for the doubts or questions online. This not only decreases their hard work but also leads to the acts of cheating. This act is known as plagiarism.

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is an act of copying someone else’s work and passing it off as your own. It often misleads the students to take a shortcut to gain marks or success. It is a serious offence which can have haphazard effect on the assignments.

Types of plagiarism

1.Direct plagiarism: This type of plagiarism involves copying or stealing someone else’s work and using it as their own. It is often used by students to submit their assignments.

2.Self plagiarism: This act is witnessed when the previous work done by the same student is used for the next work to be submitted.

3.Mosaic plagiarism: This kind of plagiarism is when few of the instances of your work are copied from the original source without paraphrasing it or adding a quote.

4.Accidental plagiarism: Here when any quote or source are missed by accident or the student forgets to cite the original source is termed as accidental plagiarism.

6 effective tips to avoid plagiarism in an essay

1.Paraphrase your essay: The first technique to avoid plagiarism is to use paraphrasing. Paraphrase is nothing but replacing the original work’s words with your own. It is a duly a legit method to have the original work in your essay without harming the law of authenticity.

It is strictly required to know the content properly before summarizing it or writing in your own words. The content of the work should be intact else it becomes meaningless if the content deviates from the topic.

2.Cite the original sources: Another effective way of avoiding plagiarism is to cite your work.  Popular citation format such as APA, Harvard, and MLA must be followed. The guidelines for proper formatting can be found here.

The advantage of following the proper format is that it organizes the essay into a proper structure. It allows citing the sources which were used while researching for the topic.

3.Quoting: There might be chances for the essay to become debatable if the words are taken from other’s work. To avoid such circumstances, it is advised to use quoting.

This technique involves quoting particular sentences in an essay which is not yours. These words should be added in between the quotation marks “ “. This indicates that you have used some of the important sentences from the research that cannot be changed.

This will help in avoiding plagiarism as well as keeping the meaning of the context intact.  

4.Research for the topic: It becomes plagiarism if the work already published is used as it is. To get better off it, it is advisable to research for the topic on the internet, books, journals, or textbooks.

These researched points or content can be later used for writing an essay in your own words.

5.Include in-text citations: In-textcitation is a citation which should be included in your own write-up. There are different ways through which an in text citation can be cited such as in APA, MLA, and Harvard. 

6.Organizing the work: Every writer has their own writing style. To avoid plagiarism, it is always suggested to write in your writing style. This leads to obtaining uniqueness in the write-up. 

These are few of the ways through which plagiarism can be avoided in an essay.