Last updated on September 21st, 2023
Plagiarism is the easiest way to have your content dismissed. It’s when you take others’ words or ideas and pass them off as your own. When you plagiarise an article, you take full credit for its originality rather than crediting its author. However, to know how to avoid plagiarism, you should be aware of the different types of plagiarism.
In essence, it is a type of intellectual theft, and be it academic writing or website content, it is also considered an offense that is punishable by law.
Duplicate content is thus something that must be avoided at any cost while creating content. Read on to find out more.
Types of Plagiarism
There are different types of plagiarism that occur these days like:
1. Complete Plagiarism
This is when you simply copy-paste an article word-by-word. It’s basically stealing someone’s work in its entirety and putting it under your own name without editing it, and without any change to its language, the flow of the statements, or any other part of the article.
2. Partial Plagiarism
Partial plagiarism is when you copy sections of information or data from different sources and combine them to make up your own unique article. It’s taking ideas from various sources instead of a single one, unlike complete plagiarism.
It involves changing up the flow of the content, but without any change to the sentence structure, all in an attempt to make your content seem ‘different enough.’
3. Lazy Plagiarism
Lazy plagiarism is sloppy plagiarism. An excellent example of this is when someone takes notes directly from a lecture and doesn’t put the footnotes in quotations or cite the sources.
5 Reasons Why Writers Opt For Plagiarism
When we’re talking about article writing, it is easy to fall into the trap of plagiarism for several reasons. The most common reason is a lack of confidence, which translates into a lack of originality.
This is how writers fall into the trap of using the ‘skyscraper technique’ where they use the original content as the baseline for their research and try to improve it.
Some of the other reasons why writers fall into the plagiarism trap are-
• Lack of time management skills – They simply don’t know how to manage their time and rush through deadlines.
• Laziness – Some writers are lazy and unwilling to put in the work required to curate an original content piece. This is where hiring content writing services can help.
• Pressure to Succeed – If the article is written meant for the purpose of a grade or meeting a milestone, the pressure to write can become too daunting. This is why some academic writers don’t thrive under pressure and end up plagiarising content.
• Too many resources – The internet is filled with many websites and resources from where writers can gather info. Sometimes this can become too much, and writers end up not knowing what to pick or ignore.
• They just didn’t know– If the writer is new to academic writing or citing sources, they may plagiarise information without even knowing that they’re doing it and that it’s an unacceptable practice.
Know How to Avoid Plagiarism For Getting Better Results
If you’re not blatantly paraphrasing someone’s work or stealing ideas but using their material for research purposes, you’re doing okay. What this means is you write in your own words, without copying other’s ideas line-by-line, nor taking apart their flow.
If your new article looks completely different from the piece you’re relying on for your research, then that won’t count as duplicate content.
We get into more about how to write unique content without plagiarism below. Here are some tips and tactics.
1. Understand What You Write About
Understand the topic you’re writing about. Don’t simply copy-paste ideas or rip them off. Make sure you cite your sources if you’re taking out any quotes or passages from your research papers.
2. Use Content Writing Services
You can consider freelance content writing services as a great of providing you with content while saving you a great deal of time and stress. While it will cost you, you can be assured of the quality of the content you receive – it will be edited, checked for plagiarism, and thus absolutely original.
3. Use A Plagiarism Checker
Using tools like Copyscape and Grammarly is a great way to ensure what you write is truly original and not plagiarised.
4. Mention Your References
If you end up taking someone’s ideas, it’s an accepted practice to cite them in your list of references. By doing this, you ensure that you’re crediting the author of the content you’re relying on for their work.
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In Conclusion
Content writing in India is a growing niche, and there are many talented content writers who are well-versed in plagiarism laws these days. Hiring content writing services can make researching your papers a lot easier and save you money too. Because at the end of the day, blatant copying can end up getting you sued and your content dismissed.
