Plagiarism is a term that often surfaces while dealing with academic content. However, plagiarism is not restricted to the academic world. In simple terms, plagiarism is content stealing.
An author can publish content in any form. When a person published a piece of content, one can regard it as the author’s original work. The author of the article cites the references and influential ideas used in the document.
When a published article or paper contains content that the author does not write, but at the same time, it is not appropriately credited as a reference source. This type of unaccredited content is plagiarism. This copied content is wrongly attributed to the author of the paper/article, but it is written by someone else in reality.
There are many forms of plagiarism, but it is broadly divided into unintentional plagiarism and deliberate plagiarism. People who mistakenly forget to attribute the authors of reference articles or make similar mistakes that fail to demarcate reference quotes from individual passages are held guilty of unintentional plagiarism. People who try to manipulate data consciously and take credit for work done by other authors commit deliberate plagiarism.
The importance of creating unique content
It is not easy to formulate unique content. Sometimes people do not have the individual thinking capacity to come up with new ideas. In other cases, individuals try to save time and take the short route of copying data.
However, it is vital to understand that creating unique content is the best method for avoiding plagiarism. When unique ideas are formulated, then there can be no cause for plagiarising text from other authors. However, plagiarism prevention is not the sole reason for making unique content. The process that is involved in making unique content nourishes the intellectual faculty of the brain. It makes people think critically and constructively about the given information.
The utility of thesaurus for combating plagiarism
The ability to draw individual inferences helps in building unique content. However, language and vocabulary skills are necessary for articulating unique ideas through written words. A simplistic rendition of research material through words is not forbidden.
However, it is vital to phrase content in a unique way. Good vocabulary helps in eliminating similar phrases and words that otherwise mar the impression of the content. Files can be compared side-by-side to find the differences between the files’ style and content.
One can gather vocabulary ideas through this type of comparison. One should discard repetitive use of words and phrases, and online dictionaries like thesaurus can help a writer replace common words with unique ones.
Guidelines for creating unique content
Unique content is essential for curbing copied content. Plagiarism often stems from paraphrasing previously published content. It is challenging to create new content at every step because of the increasing amount of content on the virtual platform. There is an increasing number of sites and social pages that deal with similar topics or products.
At many junctions, the content on similar websites tends to match. However, as online content creators, it is essential to take the responsibility of creating unique content. A few simple steps can ensure content uniqueness, and those are:
- Prepare the content without getting influenced by similar content. Try not to do an extensive web search before writing the first draft of the content. In this way, individual and unique ideas will surface and dominate the article instead of external material.
- Use the sources that are credible for writing the content. Citing every source is vital for avoiding plagiarism. It is also wise to use extremely pertinent citations. Few citations do not tarnish the content; hence, overpowering the main subject with references is not wise.
- Review the content for the copied matter. One can compare word files on similar topics against the present document with a file compare tool to avoid duplicate content.
With the online comparison tool’s help, it becomes effortless to scan two files side by side. The compare tool application thoroughly compares the contents on the files to generate the document compare report. Hence, it is suitable to opt for an advanced compare tool to compare text files side by side.
