Plagiarism and academic writing are the two things that you don’t want mixing. Plagiarism is considered extremely unethical in all aspects, but it is especially penalized when it comes to academics.
It is the practice of using someone else’s ideas, concepts, and words as your own without giving them credit. In situations when an essay deadline is looming over your head, and a simple copy paste seems harmful – it can actually be considered as a serious offense by your professors.
You might be new to writing academic papers; It’s your first year of college and your English teacher has warned you of the consequences but you don’t exactly know what they are talking about – Don’t worry, this article covers everything you will need to know about plagiarism and how you can avoid it.
Paraphrasing wisely
When writing academic essays, it is absolutely crucial that you understand the subtle art of paraphrasing. The best thing to do is understand a certains section of an article or reference paper you are looking at, and then try to explain it in your words.
An easier way to do this is simply explaining the idea in a much simpler and easy-to-understand type of way.
The thing about paraphrasing is that you get better at it in time, and the more you do it, the quicker you’ll be able to do it.
With that being said, it is important that you still credit the original source of the text that you paraphrased because even if it is your own words that you used, it can still fall under plagiarism because the idea was not yours to begin with.
Become a pro at citation
If there are certain bits and pieces that you feel like cannot be conveyed in an articulate way if you paraphrase, then the best thing to do is use quotations and then cite the original source.
Citation can be slightly confusing in the beginning because there are lots of different academic formats that professors use – MLA, APA, Chicago, to name a few – but there are lots of resources online that you can use which will generate your citation in a click of a button.
If you use essay writer free, for instance, you won’t have to worry about plagiarism at all because those essays are written by experts who know the consequences of plagiarism.
Update the bibliography as you go
Lots of students tend to keep the bibliography page for last, but this is highly inefficient. A better thing to do is to update the bibliography as you keep adding new citations and update the bibliography right after.
This way you won’t have to worry about missing anything, or accidentally overlooking a citation as you will be assured that everything is in order because you kept track.
It also saves you a lot of time this way because you don’t have to go back into your essays looking for where you used sources – this can get even more tedious if the essay is lengthy.
