Avoiding Plagiarism in Your Essay

What is the worst thing that could happen to your essay? Making tons of lexical and grammatical mistakes? Failing to convey the deep message of your writing? All of these are certainly bad. However, they won’t get you expelled from college. But plagiarizing might. That is why checking your essay for any signs of stealing someone else’s ideas is essential. We, at Papersmaster.com, provide our clients only with 100% original papers, that’s why we can give you some advice on what you should do to keep your paper free of plagiarism.

Start Early and Be Prepared

A proper essay outline will solve tons of problems. Eliminating plagiarism is certainly one of them. Each essay requires a good balance between your ideas and their foundation from other sources. Thus, when you’re preparing to write an essay make sure to create a certain scheme, that will show you where you’ve used references to other works, and what parts are totally yours. What is more, starting your preliminary reading, you should also note the ideas you’d like to include in your paper at the moment you encounter them. In the end, the outline will make writing and editing much easier.

Don’t Plagiarize, Steal or Appropriate

The idea is simple: paraphrase the information you want to use in your essay. It is clear, that you cannot build all your paper on quoted phrases. That is why you need to interpret the ideas, you want to include in your work. What you need to remember, though, is that paraphrasing author’s ideas you need to summarize and restate them, rather than simply rendering the same information. So be patient, attentive and use the right words.

Cite Them All

Citing your sources is crucial. All of your instructors have probably told you that thousand times already. However, tons of students tend to forget about it every day. That is why you need to check and double-check everything you write, detecting all of the not cited sources and correcting the situation immediately. Another important detail in this regard is clarifying citation style, required by your instructor:MLA, APA or Chicago style. This way you’ll prevent yourself from refashioning the whole paper when you think it’s completely finished.

Quotation Marks are Your Friends

Let’s say you need to write an essay, analyzing certain work of other author. The guideline here is clear: if you use author’s words, taken directly from the text, make sure to include them into quotation marks. What you need to keep in mind though is that this rule might not be followed, if you quote the words that don’t carry any crucial meaning. Nevertheless, to stay on the safe side, pay thorough attention to the phrase, you’re using in your text and if it’s not a preposition or a character’s name – quote it.

If you have questions about writing your essay – consult our Tips and Prompts section. Don’t plagiarize, work hard and enjoy the writing.