Essays, Term Papers That Will Pass Turnitin

Essays, Term Papers That Will Pass Turnitin

Picture this: college years, professor, term paper, plagiarism - Turnitin. Chances are, you are familiar with the anxiety around that revolves around Turnitin. As soon as you submit your paper, a lot of questions race in your mind: did I cite my cite sources? Did I cite my sources properly? Will my term paper pass Turnitin?

For the anxious student who does not want to wind up in a plagiarism case, it is best to know how Turnitin works and how to go about making sure that the paper being submitted passes it with flying colors.

What is Turnitin?

Turnitin® is one of the most popular plagiarism checker used by high schools and universities across the English-speaking academia. Turnitin is a service that uses a software which scans the text of a submitted document, runs it through a comprehensive process of detecting similar texts from other sources, and determines and highlights chunks of text that are similar to a source or multiple sources. Often, it takes a few hours for Turnitin to come up with a result. Turnitin allows resubmissions, which take at least 24 hours before yielding a result - this depends on whether the professor permits resubmission entries, to begin with.

The result comes in the form of a metric called the “Similarity Index” to quantitatively summarize how much of the text are similar to other sources. Professors commonly use this metric, firstly, as one of their criteria for submitting their papers. A professor would require that the paper, say, should not exceed a Similarity Index of 20 percent; lest, it may be liable as a case for plagiarism.

The most significant point here is that plagiarism does not recognize intent. What this means is that regardless of whether a student intended to plagiarize or not, it is still considered plagiarism.

It should be understandable now why a student feels anxious whenever he is about to submit a paper in Turnitin. Plagiarism cases are an extremely serious matter in the academe. In most cases, it may lead to the expulsion to the student. Hence, if you are a student who does not want to risk your chance of attaining your diploma in the process of your college education, consider this checklist of five points to remember as you write your essay.

Turnitin Safe or "Turnitin-proof" Essays

Turnitin is a software that checks content for matches on the Internet. Obviously, if you deal with a subpar level writing service that hires cheap writers who cut and paste from the Internet, the resulting paper will never pass a plagiarism test like Turnitin or SafeAssign. The software will easily find the sentences copied by the writer from different websites. On the other hand, if a ghostwriter does a great job and writes the paper from scratch, no matches will be found. Hence, any essay written by our company can be considered turnitin-proof or turnitin-safe.

1. Don’t copy and paste-quote the source.

“Copy-pasting” is where the student highlights the text of source - either a portion of it or the entire text - and puts it in his paper, claiming it as his own work. This is perhaps one of the most common and extreme ways that students do their papers - and a surefire way to get in trouble. Turnitin makes quick work of papers by students who do this method. Even without Turnitin, well-read professors will almost immediately recognize a copy-pasted work.

Even if a student copies and pastes a piece of text with the intention of quoting it - most of the times, for textual evidence - the possibility of committing plagiarism is still quite high. This is especially when the student does not use the proper method of citation and quotation - the latter will be discussed in more detail later. Again, plagiarism does not recognize intent.

If you copy and paste a piece of text as part of your work, always make sure to utilize the proper quotation method. The simple use of quotation marks, along with a proper in-text citation of the source, will always do the trick.

Secondly, if you do quote the source, make sure that the quotation is not extremely long. This is another common method by students who has to reach that dreaded word count. Some students who experience “writer’s block” - a phenomenon where a person reaches a dead stop of his ideas as he writes - may also be tempted to make long quotations of texts.

A lengthy quotation, regardless if it is quoted and cited properly, can still be liable as plagiarism. This is because papers should contain more original content than it does cited content. To illustrate this, picture a 500-word essay by a student, but 450 of the words are a quotation which is properly made; the other 50 words are actually by the student which are used only to introduce the quotation. Properly quoted? Yes. Plagiarized? Definitely.

Again, do not copy-paste; quote - and quote briefly.

2. Do not replace a few words-paraphrase entirely.

Another thing that students might do is to copy-paste the text then replace some of the words. The thought process would go like this:

“It’s only plagiarism if my paper has text exactly like in the source, right? Well, I can just change a few words, then I’m good to go!”

Some students might think this is a workaround to the algorithm of the software that Turnitin uses. On paper, this may sound like a practical “solution.” However, bear in mind that Turnitin does not play favorites with words. It scans and cross-references the entire document entry, considering not only keywords but also sentence structure and punctuation. Changing specific keywords - even minor words at that - without changing anything else in the text will still net an extremely high risk of being flagged for plagiarism.

The solution to this is to paraphrase the idea from the source entirely. This means not only changing some words; it means writing completely new sentences that refer to the idea. Make sure to construct different sentence structures and to use different words when necessary. Think of paraphrasing as talking about the idea in your own words. Paraphrasing may prove lengthy and difficult; it may take fifteen minutes to paraphrase a single idea. Those fifteen minutes, however, may spell the difference between graduation and expulsion.

Paraphrase properly, and the algorithm will not suspect a thing.

3. Don’t recycle your own or others’ old essays-write new, original essays.

If not copy-pasting, recycling old works may become a strategy for students to write their essays. Sometimes, it may be an essay that a student himself wrote before; other times, it is one made by another person. This is intended not so much as a workaround to plagiarism, but rather as a shortcut to finish essays. Some students just want the essay requirement over with.

Regardless, this does become a matter of plagiarism. Recycling old works can become a careless ordeal. A student might unintentionally write a string of words, or even entire sentences, that are similar or even the same as one from the older work. Worse still, the old essay is an entry in the database of Turnitin. When the recycled essay is submitted, it gets matched with the older essay - plagiarism.

To this end, quotations and paraphrasing are effective methods of avoiding plagiarism. However, what works best when it comes to writing an essay is to write it entirely from scratch. It may be very difficult, considering that novelty in ideas is not easy to attain, to say the least. In the end, it is a worthwhile investment of time and effort when plagiarism is concerned.

New, original essays will not be flagged at all by the Turnitin’s algorithm. The worst that may happen is a few negligible flags on texts that bear no distinct intellectual substance as to constitute plagiarism.

The steps shown so far are concerned with avoiding plagiarism that may spring from dangerous “shortcut strategies” that could land perpetrators a case on plagiarism. The next steps are on how to hit the nail in the coffin in avoiding plagiarism for good.

4. Stitch different sources together--paraphrase and process your sources.

You want to avoid every “shortcut strategy” there is, so you aim to make a very compelling, profound, original essay that could net you an A+ and more. How else can you make your paper tight-knit, especially from plagiarism?

Whenever you make references from different sources, not only should you mention them one-by-one. A powerful, cohesive strategy is to produce sentences with a conglomerate substance of various sources. Substantially, the strength of the argumentation of your paper is greatly amplified. More importantly, it will avoid plagiarism like the plague. While some published works have their own variations, it is a rare chance for two variations to be entirely the same. If it does happen, very rarely is it of grave concern. There are research works that share the same pool of sources, yet discuss them in different manners.

Of course, it is still vital to do the alternative strategies advised here. Quoting the sources is all right, but paraphrasing the sources are best, since the former may limit the way you formulate sentence structure, while the latter gives a much bigger space for expressing and transitioning your ideas.

The most important thing to do when it comes to sources, however, is citing them.

5. Cite your sources according to MLA, APA, or Harvard.

Aside from a proper, original usage of words and sentences, citation is the other main half of making sure that a paper does not contain plagiarism. Whenever a student uses ideas from a source, he must always cite that source in his work. A simple mention is not enough. In the realm of education and research, especially, a systematic method of citing sources properly should be followed to make sure that the sources are properly mentioned.

One of the essential components of citing properly is the citation style, which is the kind of style of citing sources by following the appropriate format. There are different kinds of citation styles that are distinctly used based on their specialized use in fields of study. For instance, the MLAcitation format is used particularly for students, while the Chicago Manual of Style has a method for Arts papers, another for Science papers.

This is a vital factor to consider, as each professor assigns a different citation style for his class from another professor. Take great care, for instance, not to use Harvard style when APA is required.

Regardless of citation style, there are always two parts of citing sources in papers: the bibliography and the in-text citations.

The bibliography is a section of the essay which serves as the directory that lists down all of the pertinent sources that are used in the essay. This is where professors or other readers look to if they are curious of the sources from where the student used his information. The entries of a bibliography must follow a specific formatting prescribed by the citation style. The formatting will depend on the type of material used.

Accompanying the bibliography is the in-text citations. Commonly, there are two ways of doing in-text citations. One is the parenthetical form, where a brief citation is made in a parenthesis containing the author, year of the publication of the source, or page, depending on the source. Sometimes, footnotes are utilized as a means of citation within the body text. These are vital in making sure that a paper has a complete citation. A bibliography alone can only serve as a directory of the sources used. In-text citations and footnotes indicate which sources are used in particular. Without them, it is vague whenever sources are said to be used.

If you used a source but have not cited it, cite. If you cite a source, cite properly. If you are not sure if you should cite, cite. Always remember to cite your sources. Turnitin will take you kindly for it. Most importantly, your education depends on it.

The technology behind Turnitin is far from perfect. Some professors admit that Turnitin is not a definitive tool for scanning and determining plagiarism in a work. It is used to help in such a process, but it is still under the discretion and assessment of the professors to determine whether there truly is plagiarism at work - and they are very stern at it. Ultimately, the main concern of plagiarism is not so much word usage but of intellectual substance. Students are compelled to write their own original works as a means of demonstrating their knowledge and insights and of contributing to the academe. A work that is completely paraphrased and rife with quotations, no matter how properly cited it is, will still be considered plagiarism because it does not qualify as an attempt for an original work.

Regardless, Turnitin does the job when it comes to catching a naive student trying to pass a freshly downloaded free essay as their own work. Indeed, it may be a hurdle to many students when it comes to writing and submitting their essays. In the end, though, it compels students to produce genuinely original output that makes them utilize the very skills and knowledge of critical thinking, argumentation, researching, writing - oh, and citation.Need help with your term paper or essay