Education and Science Research

With increasing frequency, colleges and universities are making use of Web-based plagiarism checking services to scan papers for stolen material. And the consequences can be dire: at one end of the spectrum, a failing grade for the assignment; at the other end, dismissal from an academic program. If you are intentionally plagiarizing in your paper, thesis, or dissertation, this should give you pause. But if you are not intentionally plagiarizing, there could still be reason for concern. Plagiarism checking software catches an ever-growing amount of appropriated material–and sometimes the student has not even meant to do anything wrong! In what follows, I’d like to offer some simple tips for avoiding plagiarism of the unintentional variety.

1. Know what constitutes plagiarism. Simply put, plagiarism is the use of the words or ideas of another person without giving credit to the person from whom they are borrowed. Right off the bat, this tells us something important: you can’t simply change a few words of a borrowed text (so that the passage is no longer a direct quotation) and think that you are out of danger. Unless the material is “common knowledge,” a citation is needed for any material you borrow–whether it is a direction quotation, a paraphrase, or even just an idea.

2. Know what your professor will look for. Even before the advent of the computer, professors caught students who plagiarized; the Internet has just made it much, much easier. So what might give a clue to a professor that the material you’ve presented as your own really came from someone else?
Fluctuations in style Vocabulary that isn’t typical for you Harsh connections between passages Deviations in the point of view from which the text is written Contradictions in the theories or positions maintained in the paper The failure of the paper to address the specific topic assigned (suggesting it may have been borrowed or purchased) The unavailability in your university/college library of the sources referenced in the paper The use of exclusively Web-based sources Recognizing the material (Your professor is probably an expert in this field, after all!)

On its own, nothing on this list is a guarantee that material has been plagiarized. However, the combination of several of these points will certainly raise suspicions and will probably cause your professor to dig deeper.

3. Know how anti-plagiarism programs work. If your college, university, or professor is using a Web-based anti-plagiarism service, it’s a good idea to know what the program searches for. If you’re intentionally plagiarizing, chances are that you won’t outsmart these programs; if you’re not intentionally plagiarizing, understanding the programs will help you to avoid plagiarizing inadvertently. Anti-plagiarism programs currently in use do a combination of the following:
Search the Internet for word strings that may have been lifted. The easiest way to get caught plagiarizing is to take something from a source available on the Internet. You will almost certainly get caught, as even the simplest and cheapest programs do this much. Search cached sources. Even if your source is no longer available on the Web, it may still be available to the anti-plagiarism search as long as it was on the Web at one time. Search databases of papers, theses, dissertations, articles, and books, usually comparing your paper against millions of archived sources. This means that even print sources that have never been available on the Internet may turn up in the search. Compare documents. This allows professors and universities to submit multiple papers (even over a number of years) to compare them for material that they share in common. Make internal comparisons. The more sophisticated programs use algorithms to examine sentence structure and synonyms, allowing them to catch even paraphrased material that has not been copied exactly.
4. Don’t cut-and-paste. By definition, if you are doing this, you are borrowing material, and you’re likely to leave clues (see tip #2, above). NOTE that this rule applies even to borrowing your own material from papers you’ve written previously. If you ignore this rule, then be sure to cite the source of whatever you’ve borrowed.

5. Don’t paraphrase without citing the source. Yes, it’s plagiarism even if you change the words. If it’s someone else’s idea, a citation is needed. Always.

6. If you use someone else’s words, always use quotation marks (or block quote formatting). No exceptions. Period.

7. Know your style sheet. Each academic style sheet (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian), has its own conventions for citing sources. If you don’t follow the right conventions, you could inadvertently wind up being accused of stealing the material.

8. Beware of “common knowledge.” This is the one big gray area–what really is “common knowledge”? If there’s the slightest doubt in your mind, find the source and cite it. If you can’t find the source, drop the material from your paper.

9. Get your work edited. Whether you rely on a professional editing service, a professor, someone from your college’s writing center, or a really smart friend, a second set of eyes may catch what you missed, saving you a major hassle in the end.

10. When in doubt, CITE!

What is Plagiarism?

In the academic world, plagiarism is known as stealing someone else’s written work and ideas and presenting them as your own. Plagiarism is a very common problem faced by students because of lack of awareness. Sometimes students don’t plagiarize intentionally, but because of lack of awareness they become a victim of plagiarism.

Following are 5 effective guidelines to avoid plagiarism:

Inserting Citations
Sometimes students search for required information on the internet and gather different ideas from various sources with out inserting proper citations that can provide guidance to their teacher about their references and the sources. You may use ideas of the author but you should use your own words when writing about a certain idea and the exact source or reference so that the teacher can check and confirm that your work is not plagiarized. If you do not use proper citations even if you have paraphrased the work, it will still be considered as plagiarized text.

Using Software
It is extremely important for the teachers to guide the students about using particular software that can detect unintentional plagiarized work.

Correct Selection of Sentences
Try to avoid words and sentences that are commonly used by every author. For instance, if you use something like “Once Upon A Time” which is very common, you can be caught plagiarizing unintentionally.

Change your words
While paraphrasing an author’s work use your own words. Don’t ever mix it up with your own and author’s words. Strictly practice to come up with your own words and sentences so as to make it original.

Use Quotations
If you intend to copy paste something that you feel cannot be regenerated in your own words, than use quotations with inverted comas and inserting citations. Sentences or words using inverted commas will be an indication for your teacher that your work is not plagiarized.

Be aware of plagiarism and don’t just blindly work on your essays and term papers just to get rid of work. Try to religiously practice these guidelines in order to make your custom essays, term papers, research reports, assignments, thesis, and dissertations plagiarism free and obtain higher grades.

Before I start, realize this is purely my opinion but it needs to be clearly stated. Okay so, if you are a far left-leaning social-liberal progressive Democrat and you just happen to be a writer, you might be in luck. And let me tell you why; there are progressive media groups, one very famous one in Chicago, one which helped get very prominent politicians elected in the past.

And now they are up to their old schemes again of hiring professional writers to write op-ed pieces and letters to the editor, which they will then distribute to social-liberal progressive voters in various states, who will then sign these letters, as if they wrote them themselves; and then send these into their local newspaper editors.

Now, I know that sounds very dishonest, but that’s how politics works in this country. Now the editors of the newspaper know what’s going on, but they still publish these letters to the reader anyway, all the while knowing that the individual sending in the letter didn’t write it. In fact, the editors often get the same letter from notable people, from multiple individuals. It would be nice if the editors to all the newspapers would simply not publish this stuff, as it is all obviously part of a campaign to manipulate the media, but the newspapers publish them anyway.

This is really too bad, but since the newspapers allow this manipulation to go on, and often have writers who are left-leaning politically inclined reporters – it is just business as usual. Which brings me to my next point, I wish newspaper editors will take their job more seriously than this – and maybe it is okay if half the newspapers in the country are nearly bankrupt, because they don’t deserve to be in business if this is how they choose to operate, and yes, they do have a choice.

They have the choice of integrity in journalism, and to take a stand for honesty – but obviously they won’t.

What’s even more interesting is that the progressive media group in Chicago has previously put out 2500 op-ed pieces (according to their own website) sending them around the country to individuals to send them to their local newspaper with their name on it. It doesn’t take very much to find out using plagiarism software that these articles have been posted elsewhere in the country under different names, therefore, the person submitting it to them obviously did not write it.

If a newspaper editor allows this, and still publishes the op Ed piece, they are doing a disservice to our nation, to the voters, and to the integrity of the newspaper media overall. This in my opinion is totally unacceptable, and it proves you can’t believe anything you read in the newspaper anymore. Personally, I feel sickened by what I’ve learned – that these tactics go on every day during the political season. Please consider all this.

It seems as if plagiarism runs rampant. Sadly, not too many people think the problem is too serious. If this happened elsewhere, the guilty person will be ostracized, or even worse, sent to jail. It’s a big crime, and to do it, you’re no better than the scammers that run amok all over the web. Major search engines have realized how common it is to plagiarize someone else’s content. As punishment, they penalize the site itself. The site will be viewed as an outcast, one that doesn’t deserve to be up and running.

Writers have knowingly chosen to pattern and copy articles. They think that so long as they have blogs and editorials present, they can immediately rank high on the search engine results pages. That’s not the way the web works. Now, Google, Yahoo, and other major search engines will not think twice about fining or banning the site altogether. Your business can go down the drain and all that hard work will be futile. Just to give you an idea, these are the things that could happen to you if you don’t take plagiarism too seriously:

You could get fined. Your site can get banned. Visitors will not be able to visit your site and subscribe to your products. You will not be able to work with people who can improve your business significantly. You risk your reputation and get your name blacklisted by important businessmen from all over the world. You will lose all rights to the product you’ve worked so hard for. You will be denied the rights to work for any corporation. Your work will prove to be insignificant, and as a result, you not only lose the hours you’ve put in, but the investment you’ve made.

Putting in the bibliography is still considered an act of plagiarism. While it is okay that you get your information elsewhere (that is, after all, how you need to research), you need to state what you’ve read about in your own words. You must do everything in your power to protect your reputation, and if possible, run a test for everything you submit to make sure that what you’ll be giving is entirely unique. Articles that are your own do add value to your business, and if you want search engines to take you seriously, you need to follow the rules set. You want people to come to you and seek whatever it is you’re offering. This isn’t your territory, and therefore, you need to abide by the guidelines set by those who can help you attain your goals.

If you come across an article that may be useful to you, always verify if the copyrights belong to someone else. This means that the owner has total jurisdiction over it. If you really want to do well, you need to equip yourself with the proper SEO knowledge. Your job would be to develop your site’s internal components and use words to attract the customers to you. There are experts available, and if you want to fast-track your growth, you can definitely seek their services.

If you are dreaming of becoming a freelance writer and earn your living through freelance writer jobs and if you have a sound grasp over the English language, possess decent or exceptional writing abilities and have a flair for research, then you are bang on target. Freelance writing online might just be the right career for you and you can pursue freelance writer jobs either full time or part time as a hobby and it is a good way of earning some extra cash in these tough economic times.

As a full timer it is possible to earn between $3000 and $4000 per month while in the busy months you can end up earning as much as $5000 to $6000. Part timers usually rake in between $1000 and $2000 per month. Add to it extra bonuses if you succeed in completing your assignments on time and just in the way your client ordered. If you can succeed in satisfying your client’s requirements, you can even get additional bonuses.

From the name itself you can realize that Freelance writing online is an internet job where you have to research over the internet, find your work or bid for your assignments through email and on completion of your project, send off the finished assignments via email once more. That means, this freelance writing job is a work that you can pursue from the comforts of your home without putting one step out of your home.

Other advantages of opting for freelance writing online are that the work hours are extremely flexible – you can work whenever you want to, either in the morning or in the afternoon or at night – whenever you are free. At the same time, stay at home moms can look after household affairs and their kids.
You can decide how much work load you will be able to handle, no one will compel you to slog it out or force more assignments on you than you can possibly handle.

You can even choose which companies or which individuals to work with, what kind of assignments to take up and you have the full freedom to select assignments on your favorite topics. And the best part is that you can even haggle with your clients over the rate of payment and quote your own price for freelance writer jobs.

However there is need for some initial investment in the form of a good laptop and anti virus program, anti plagiarism software, high speed internet connection and other such set up costs. But when you will be earning close to $4000 per month, you won’t mind shelling out a little money for these small expenses.

And you have to be serious and disciplined about your freelance writer jobs. Just because you are working from home doesn’t mean you can do whatever you like. You have to treat your freelance writer jobs and freelance writing online career at par with office jobs and show the same amount of dedication, professionalism and sincerity.

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