How to Avoid Plagiarism With Five Simple Steps

Intentional or not, plagiarism can cost you grades, damage your credibility, and bring on a lot of unnecessary stress.

But with just a few habits, you can avoid plagiarism and submit your original work with confidence. 

In this guide, we’ll walk you through five simple steps to help you use your sources correctly and keep your writing 100% authentic.

1. Use Original Ideas and Opinions

Write your ideas and insights regarding your research topic. This helps express that you thoroughly understand the subject. But if you need to use information from another source, make sure it’s accurate and properly cited.

2. Paraphrase When Necessary

When writing on a topic or insight from a particular source, instead of writing word-for-word, try writing it in your own words. However, even if you paraphrase the content, certain claims and facts still need to be cited. 

3. Keep Track of Your Sources

When pulling information from multiple sources, especially when writing a research paper, it's easy to lose track of where an idea came from. 

So, you want to make sure you cite any information obtained from a book, journal article, blog, or website during the research process. 

Anytime you're researching, you can either bookmark your sources, write them down, or drop them into a citation manager like Zotero or Mendeley. This makes it easy to double-check where you found a phrase or idea when you're writing your paper.

4. Use Quotation Marks for Direct Quotes

Sometimes, paraphrasing the original author's idea can take away its impact or meaning, so quoting directly makes more sense. 

Adding direct quotes can also support your point and add credibility without sounding like a copy of someone else’s work. However, it needs to be done correctly. 

Here’s how to do it properly:

• If you're using text directly from a source, place quotation marks around the exact quoted words or sentence.
  

• Include a citation immediately after the quote to show where the words came from.
  

• Follow the required citation style (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.) to make sure the claim is accurate.
  

5. Use a Plagiarism Checker

This is your safety net. Using a plagiarism checker before submitting your paper can help you identify unintentional plagiarism and missing citations and ensure your work is authentic, so you can submit it with confidence. 

Tools like Rephrasy, Scribbr, Grammarly, or Turnitin can scan your paper against billions of online sources and academic publications.

However, you want to avoid free tools that store or reuse your content. Our plagiarism checker doesn't save your document in our repository, so you don’t need to worry about your paper getting flagged as AI-plagiarized. 

Final Thoughts

Whether you’re writing a research paper or for a client, it's important to keep your content original and free from plagiarism.

By following these five steps, you can check your work before submitting to ensure you have no trace of plagiarism in your work.