Plagiarism is a serious issue for college students when writing essays and papers. Plagiarism refers to taking work that you did not write and passing it off as your own. For example, one basic way to do this would be to copy and paste information from a website and include it in your essay as if you wrote it yourself. However, plagiarism is not always this simple. Chances are that when you are writing an essay or paper you will need to mention work by other people to back up your argument. How you include and reference this will make all the difference. Here are some tips to help you avoid plagiarism as a student.

Choose Your Resources Carefully:

Today, students can find a wide range of resources such as EssaysWriting available to help them produce better essays and get higher grades. However, if you are going to be taking advantage of resources and services that are designed to help you with essay writing, be sure to take their stance on plagiarism into account. It’s important to only use essay writing resources that are committed to helping you produce completely plagiarism-free work.

Write in Your Own Words:

Whether you’re making an argument for or against something, explaining a process or talking about the conclusion of a study that you conducted, you should always write in your own words. Academic writing can be tough, especially if you are not used to it. But the more you practice writing in your own words in this style, the easier it will come to you. Spend some time reading essays first to get an idea for how you will write yours. Reading essays on a different subject can be an ideal choice if you are worried about writing yours in a way that’s too similar to the examples you’re studying.

Reference Correctly:

Sometimes, using somebody else’s work in your essay is going to be unavoidable. Whether you are backing up your evidence, quoting an expert in your field or using the findings from a study to strengthen your point, including evidence and other work to put your point across is an important part of a good academic essay. So, how do you do this without plagiarizing? Bear in mind that in academia, plagiarism isn’t just simply copying and pasting. Even if you paraphrase and write something in your own words, this could be seen as plagiarism if you do not reference the original author. So, be sure to include references for absolutely everything that is not completely your own.

Check Before Submitting:

You can find various tools online that you can use to check your essay for plagiarism before submitting it. Bear in mind that colleges and schools expect the plagiarism score to be over 0% simply because when you are quoting and referencing other authors this will usually come up as a match. However, as long as you have cited the authors correctly and made it clear where you got this information from, it should not be a problem.

Plagiarism can ruin your student career, and it can be easier to mistakenly plagiarize than you might think. Keep these tips in mind to avoid plagiarism and make sure that your essays pass.