It was Abraham Lincoln in a letter to his son’s teacher that said his son should be taught that it is far more honorable to fail than to cheat.
The pressure that comes with the digital age is one that has forced many students into cheating or plagiarizing the content of others as their own. Unlike many years ago where the primary source of information for students was the library, a lot of things have changed today.
With the advent of the internet, students have more access to information and this has not helped cheating, instead it has made it worse. Feedback and reviews on ReviewsBird.com shows that students in college plagiarize contents more today than they did several years ago.
Many students who engage in plagiarism are always lazy to put in the work needed to create a unique content. They sometimes find themselves asking the question – is college really important? If you are there, then it is important and you have to know how to guard against and detect plagiarism and these approaches will be of tremendous help to you.
1. Be creative in your college writing
The first and most important approach to guard against plagiarism in college is to be creative. Many of the information that you will be presenting in your work are information or a makeup of pieces of information that have been presented by someone else. To avoid plagiarizing the content of others, make sure to read multiple resources about a particular topic. That way you can broaden your understanding of it and create a unique content.
2. Quote or make a reference where possible
There are instances when writing that you have to present the thought of another person the way it is. In such instances, the best way to avoid plagiarism is to quote the person who made the statement or make a reference to where such statement was being made. You can make use of the quotation marks and provide a reference to the person or link at the end of your work.
3. Avoid text modification or spinning
Many college students in a bid to save time when writing an essay or doing assignments resort to text modifications on many occasions. Text modification and spinning are as much an offence as plagiarism is and when detected can lead to grave consequences for the student. To be on the safer side when writing, make sure to avoid text modification and spinning in its entirety.
4. Make use of plagiarism detector software
There are times when you have put all your creativity to play and there could still be some sort of plagiarism. This is where using a plagiarism detector software becomes very important. There are several software such as Grammarly, Copyscape, Quetext, and plagiarism detector among others that you can copy and paste your text into to be sure it is unique and free from plagiarism.
As a college student, you need to know the best approaches to avoid and detect plagiarism some of which have been discussed in this article. Be creative in your writing, avoid text modification and spinning, quote or make reference where possible, make use of plagiarism checker software.