Students may sound like the infallible Einstein or the wise Aristotle in their essays because of their content. But if most of the content contains passages that they did not write on their own, their essay is still bound to go downhill—either with a failing mark or a new project to complete all over again. They have committed plagiarism, which is considered the worst crime any writer can make, and that guarantees a failing mark in your essay.
Plagiarism, as defined, is the imitation or use of ideas or works of an original author in verbatim and crediting them as your own. It is what most students practice that it has become a pressing concern amongst universities. Not only is the moral foundation of the students harmed from committing such act; the overall quality of submitted essays has also slowly deteriorated since students can easily copy passages and add them in their essays. This has defeated the purpose of the essay, which is to give venues to students to demonstrate their organisational, analytical and reasoning skills in writing.
Most of the students who commit the act of plagiarism intentionally copy ideas from books, articles and the Internet and submit them as their own. Most students, however, unintentionally plagiarise because they do not have prior knowledge on how to properly cite and reference the sources that they utilised.
As students, it will remain their responsibility to make sure that their essays, before submission, are plagiarism-free. They have to take note of facts that they have gathered in their research and reference them properly. They must remember that the amount of effort they have extended for their essays will remain unappreciated if the final output is still suspected to contain plagiarised content.
There are several ways on how students can avoid plagiarism on their own. They can start with writing down all the sources of the passages they have found throughout their research. This procedure will help the students cite and references sources of the content they have included in their essays. General citation rules must also be followed. When using direct quotes from the sources, the students can state the name of the author within a parenthesis and enclose the copied phrase with quotation marks. They can also make prior research to the rules of referencing depending on the system their professors require.
When students also take on an original angle or perspective regarding their essays, they are least expected to commit plagiarism. It is the most common and general topics that are predominantly found in the Internet and other sources so taking on a different approach reflects that the essay is not simply copied from somewhere. If the students make their own interpretation on the matter being discussed in the essay, the professor will know that the content is purely original and that the students have properly demonstrated their skill in analysing concepts.
The students can also make use of search engines and other plagiarism detectors online so they can further check their essay copies. If matches are found, the students can then rephrase their sentences to make sure that there will be no similarities found in the essays they wrote.
