Whether you are a blog writer, copywriter, brand journalist, scriptwriter, songwriter, or academic writer, you need to pay attention to plagiarism. Because content duplication can lead to various consequences such as jeopardizing your reputation as a writer, and your readers might lose trust in you.
For SEO writers, plagiarized content can cause consequences like the Google penalty, negatively affect page rankings and organic traffic, and dilute link equity and page authority. For academic writers (students), content duplication could mean failing the assignment, bad reputation, or even getting expelled from the university. Thus, when writing content, ensure it is free from plagiarism.
Here in this blog post, we will talk about effective ways to avoid content duplication. However, before moving on to that, let us answer some of the most frequently asked questions about plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is copying and publishing someone else’s work as your own without permission or crediting the author. It is an unethical way to write content without proper acknowledgment. Also, plagiarism occurs when you have identical content on the same website.
Plagiarism involves intentionally stealing someone’s work, but it can happen accidentally as well as due to carelessness.
What are the main reasons for plagiarism?
The main reason for plagiarized content is not noting down the resources and avoiding proper citations and references when you write the content. Other plagiarism reasons include lack of focus due to poor time management, laziness, and poor paraphrasing.
Why is plagiarized content a problem?
Plagiarized content is a serious and intellectual offense that can result in negative consequences. If you copy content from other websites or blogs and claim it as yours, it can hurt you in many ways.
- You are subject to penalties.
Plagiarism is a serious offense in academic and professional settings. If you turn in plagiarized work, you might face various sanctions like penalties and suspensions. In the worst-case scenario, plagiarism could result in expulsion from school or termination of the contract at work.
- Your website can be banned.
If there are multiple cases of plagiarism detected on your website, it might be flagged by Google. This means nobody might be able to access the website until the issue has been resolved. You will spend a lot of time rebuilding your website’s authority and credibility.
- Lowers down your website’s search engine rankings.
If your content isn’t unique and Google detects that it is similar to the content on other websites, then your overall search engine results ranking takes a dip.
The Google algorithm will note that your website content doesn’t deliver the same freshness and relevance as other websites’ content.
- Destroys your imagination and creativity.
Lazy people might assume that intentional plagiarism is the easy way out. But if you’re just paraphrasing and rearranging someone else’s ideas without inserting your own input, then you’re wasting your creativity and critical thinking skills. It also puts your education or career at risk.
- Badly impact your writing career.
Once you turn in a plagiarized piece of content, it will already be a mark against you. Your teachers or supervisors, along with your peers, would remember that incident and be extra cautious of any work that you turn in moving forward.
What is unintentional plagiarism?
With numerous articles existing on a single topic, it is easy to paraphrase unintentionally. While researching a topic, you may like certain parts of the content on the internet and reword it. If you do not understand the topic or have an excellent grasp of the language, it can lead to plagiarism. Additionally, unintentional plagiarism can occur when you use different words but do not use citations or references.
Thus, to avoid unintended plagiarism, one should understand the topic, jot down the points to cover and write the content in own words. Also, ensure to write in an easy-to-understand way for the audience to read and enjoy. You can always use Smodin’s Citation Machine to automatically add citations.
What is intentional plagiarism?
Intentional plagiarism is the most unethical way to write. In this, the writers knowingly present other people’s ideas, words, or research as their own. They use the exact words without citing, quoting, or referencing them. This type of plagiarized content carries significant implications.
Thus, to avoid intentional plagiarism, you should use proper citations and write in your own words.
Tips To Avoid Plagiarism
Writing unique content is easy. Just keep an account of the following simple tips.
Keep records of research material
When writing content, we advise you to keep a record of research material like the sources of ideas and information. It is a great way to avoid content duplication. Here let us give you an example: you made a great argument in your content, but then you remember that the information used was from a journal you cannot find it now. You are not able to add a citation and forward the work without references making it plagiarized. Specifically, for academic writing, keeping track of the research like quotes, books, and articles is crucial. Additionally, taking notes, brainstorming, and keeping records form a good base that helps you avoid plagiarism.
Paraphrase correctly
Paraphrasing is rewriting the ideas or information from the sources into your own words without changing the meaning. However, when doing so, be cautious, as paraphrasing can slip into plagiarism if not done correctly. Successfully paraphrasing a content piece without plagiarizing requires a bit of work. You need to structure the writing and avoid using too many similar words or sentences from the source.
However, one of the easiest ways to paraphrase the content is to use a text rewriter tool. Smodin offers one of the best article rewriter tools to use as it is a machine learning rewriter. It enables you to paraphrase the content without changing the meaning and avoid plagiarized content issues. This plagiarism rewriter tool is free to use and available in multiple languages offering convenience to the users. Click HERE to rewrite your text to avoid plagiarism and keep away from the penalties.
Use quotations wherever necessary
When writing content, you can use quotations to indicate the text is taken word to word from a source. However, you need to correctly use it, which can be confusing for many writers, especially those whose primary language is not English.
Quotation marks are used to call the attention of the reader to an important word or phrase, or when using a technical term for the first time. There are various quotes like the “run-in quotes,” and quotes separated by block text. Also, there are quotes within other quotes and different punctuation styles, and even the country.
Also, there are various quotation mark rules to follow. If you are taking a text word to word, you should start the quote with a capital letter, even if the quote is in the middle of the sentence.
If you are taking a phrase or a part of the sentence, never start the quote with a capital letter. If you want to split a quote in half to include a parenthetical, never capitalize the second part of the quote.
Present your own ideas
When you write content on any topic, you should always explore it and present your own ideas. Do as much research as possible, so as not to mimic the source’s ideas or words. When you research the topic, you get a unique perspective and write entirely in your own words. Keep in mind that if you are referring to a source’s ideas to frame your own point, you will have to cite the source and add quotations to avoid duplicate content.
Also, if you are writing on the same topic, it is tempting to recycle some of your previous words. It is self-plagiarism, and the risk involved with it is as high as with plagiarized content.
Proofread and edit the content
Once you have written the content, it is crucial to proofread and edit it. Proofreading and editing the content is a process to make it error-free, enhance your writing style, and communicate your ideas to the readers. With this, you can also check the most significant issues like syntax issues, paragraph structure, and grammatical mistakes. Additionally, when proofreading and editing, the vital thing that comes up is the missing citation or sentences you forgot to express in your own words. Thus, with good proofreading and editing round, you can avoid silly mistakes and plagiarism.
Use a plagiarism checker
While writing content on any topic, you might like some words or sentences that you unintentionally include in the content without citation. Thus, to avoid the issue of plagiarism, it is best to use plagiarism checker software. There are various plagiarism checker online tools available but choose the one that is best for you. The best plagiarism tools offer deep search, give you sentence-wise results, enable you to view matched results, and are available in multiple languages.
Smodin offers such free online plagiarism checker that scans your content deeply for borrowed content and is available in various languages to suit the users’ needs. This best free plagiarism checker uses powerful deep search technology that checks billions of web pages for similar matches to the content provided. Once you paste the content and press the check button, it runs a search looking through every content on the internet within seconds, making it the fastest online plagiarism tool you will ever come across.
The other key features of this online plagiarism checker tool include multiple language detection. The features allow you to check plagiarism on content in languages other than English. So, whether you write content in Bengali, Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, Russian, Italian, Filipino, Estonian, Spanish, Tamil, or Telugu, the free plagiarism checker tool can support 50 languages.
For the best anti-plagiarism results, go to Smodins Plagiarism Checker, Smodin Rewriter & Smodin Citation Machine, use the tools before you submit your work, and refrain from possible consequences.