Plagiarism is one of the greatest problems for the majority of students. It is absolutely logical to be afraid of the issue. After all, even one mistake in this regard can lead to expulsion from some college, for instance. Thus, an essential skill that all students must possess today is the ability to use the anti-plagiarism tools in a proper and high-quality manner. In this review, we will take a look at the way an average plagiarism checker works. We don’t want to give any direct recommendations as the Internet is full of great options. What we will describe is the principle on which the free tools work. Thus, you will be able to use any available instrument to properly check your paper. Let’s take a look at the steps crucial for ensuring that you pass the university plagiarism check.

Prior to analysis: Some considerations for online anti-plagiarism tools

It’s a very good idea to use free online plagiarism checkers before sending a paper to your college. However, you should keep in mind an important fact: they’re very different from the anti-plagiarism software used by universities. Above all, the free online anti-plagiarism tools are used for some types of SEO writing. They typically serve to detect all forms of similarities between various texts. Therefore, no distinction will be made between the parts that are cited properly and the ones that feature some form of direct rewriting without referencing. In this respect, the best idea is to always look at the content highlighted by such tools. To detect plagiarism, you have to look at whether a fragment is cited well or not. If you write some review on foreign literature, plagiarism checkers will inevitably note the content that you have to cite. Generally, depending on the overall scope of the task it’s absolutely fine to have a score between 80 and 100% of originality in the majority of such tools. As long as you’re within this range, proper referencing for the majority of the content would resolve almost all potential problems that you might encounter concerning plagiarism.

Step 1. Before using the free tools, remove all potential sources of plagiarism

The first step you should consider includes some work on your part. Many instances of plagiarism detected by free tools are a result of your actions. Sometimes, while writing a text on some popular topic, a common approach is to constantly consult some text. As a result, you risk completely rewriting some of its parts and raising the overall level of plagiarism. Ultimately, the best goal is to concentrate on the following elements before even going through free online plagiarism checker:

• Look at the fragments that have a direct connection to some text, as mentioned previously. In this regard, it is essential to keep track of your activities as much as possible.
• Highlight all the fragments with direct quotations. In this respect, the free checkers will inevitably show them. You have to prepare yourself for this by simply ignoring those parts. Still, a low originality score can also be a sign that you offer too many citations. In this case, a good idea is to lower their number. Generally, for a four-page essay (approximately 1100 words), it’s a good practice to have no more than 50 to 100 words of direct quotations unless there are some alternative directions from your instructors. For the rest of the content, a good idea is to simply paraphrase and rewrite as much as possible.

Step 2. Put the content into a free plagiarism checker and take a look at the results

Putting the key content into free plagiarism checkers is usually very simple. Our research of 10 key sites dedicated to this issue indicates that they all follow the same scheme when it comes to the structure. Firstly, you will have a textbox, where it is possible to put all the data from your word document or upload the entire file. Secondly, there’s the plagiarism check button. In the end, a set of results shall appear that will give you a full-scale analysis of the main problems with your texts, highlighting the fragments that are problematic. Few services are as user-friendly as the modern anti-plagiarism tools of various kinds.

We’ve already mentioned some key rules for using a plagiarism tool available on the Internet. Most of them highlight all content that has some form of similarity. Therefore, you should not be afraid of the fact that your paper is not fully original. For the content of the academic type, some similarities in the content are utterly normal. You’ll have some direct citations, for instance, that a free tool should inevitably highlight. What you need to concentrate on, however, includes the fragments that don’t have any direct citations. They’re typically the main sources of danger. In this regard, the best idea is to completely rewrite the fragments. How to do this? We will give some information in the next step!

Step 3. Paraphrase, paraphrase, and paraphrase

When trying to remove all forms of plagiarism, the best idea is to paraphrase as much as possible. Let’s say, you have encountered a fragment with proper citations but that nonetheless has too much similarity to the source text. What should you do? In this respect, our best recommendation is to close the existing document, open some other file in which you can write something, and then, without taking a look at the original context, write your text. In this way, you should be able to present your understanding of the issues without utilizing the lexis of the other people. The method works in the absolute majority of the contexts, as our experience seems to indicate. This process of writing alone can save you from absolutely every instance of plagiarism. Similarities typically occur when you read something and don’t try to critically think about the texts. As a result, your opinion vanishes. Simply closing some text and providing your opinion on the way you see the issue can solve the majority of the problems.

In short, the ways to satisfy the best plagiarism checker for universities are diverse today. If you’re attentive to the free online tools for checking plagiarism, it should be extremely easy to eradicate the absolute majority of the problems with non-original content. All you have to do today is try as much as possible. The more attention you give to plagiarism, the less are the chance of some large-scale studying problems.