How to Remove Plagiarism from Your Essay?

Essay writing is an essential task that students have to do throughout their school life. The number of essays that need to be written can vary depending on the major. For example, political science, journalism, and literature majors will naturally require more essays compared to natural sciences.

One thing that is common though is that plagiarism is not tolerated in any of these essays. It can result in an automatic failing grade, and in some cases even suspension or expulsion. These are terrible outcomes that all students want to stay clear of.

There is one problem though, plagiarism is not always intentional. It can occur without a writer knowing about it. Unfortunately, it results in the same kind of penalties as real plagiarism. So, how do we deal with this? Well, keep reading to find out.

How to Remove Plagiarism Once it has Been Found?

Removing plagiarism is very easy, especially when you have the report from a plagiarism checker. So, here is how you can remove plagiarism.

1. Cite any External Sources

If some of the content in your essay is attributable to a source and it is also too long to quote (longer than a few sentences), then you need to cite it.

Citation is the act of giving credit to the author of a work by adding specific information. For example, if you were to use something from a book. Then after the section where you used information from it, you need to add a citation.

A citation has many different formats, you need to follow the one that your school/college uses. At the end of your essay, you will need to give a reference list that shows the complete information about all the sources that you cited.

2. Use Online Tools

The second thing you can try is to utilize tools. The tools in question are just plagiarism-removing tools. They can remove and modify parts of the text to make it plagiarism free.

You should already know that if the content that was copied belongs to the public domain, then it is okay to simply reword it. By changing the wording, you can make the text plagiarism-free.

You can opt for a plagiarism remover which can do a better job than humans most of the time. It is the best kind of tool to use when you are dealing with public-domain information.

A plagiarism remover is quite easy to use, you need to search for that exact phrase, and choose a tool from the list. Then you need to input the part of the essay that is copied and press “Confirm”. The tool will automatically remove all copied content.

3. Use Quotes

Sometimes the copied parts can be easily dealt with by “quoting” them. Quoting is a method of citing a source.

In a quote, you use the exact sentence word for word as it was written in the original source. You put this sentence/s inside quotation marks that look like this “”. At the end of the quote, you have to add the author’s name so that everyone knows who it is from.

It is a simple, yet effective way of dealing with plagiarism in your essay.

How to Find Plagiarism in Your Essay?

To deal with plagiarism you need to find it as well. There is one simple way of finding plagiarism, but it requires that your essay should be in a digital format. To perform a plagiarism check on your essay, a plagiarism checker can be used.

Here is how you can execute a plagiarism check using an online tool follow the step below:

1. Search for an Online Tool

You need to open a browser and in the search engine of your choice type any of the following phrases:

• Plagiarism checker
• Check for plagiarism
• Free plagiarism checker

Or anything related to these words. On the results page, you will mostly find online tools that can detect plagiarism in your work. You can choose any tool that is free and on the first page. First-page tools are usually the best and quite trustworthy.

Just go with your gut, or choose the tool that looks the easiest to use. If you are still having trouble choosing one, then simply go with the top result.

2. Upload your Essay to the Tool

Once you have selected a tool, you need to upload your essay to it. The most straightforward way is to copy your essay in its entirety and paste it into the tool.

A slightly convoluted way is to use the “upload” option (present in most tools) and browse your device for the essay file.

And the rarest option which is seldom present in most tools is the option to import files from cloud storage. This option is great if you are using another device to check the essay and don’t want to carry a USB around all the time. It can also help you if you are using a public computer to check your work and don’t want the risk of infecting your USB/portable drive.

3. Confirm and Get the Plagiarism Report

The final step is to confirm your decision to perform the plagiarism check. To do that, you just need to press the button that says something like “Submit,” “Confirm,” or “Check Plagiarism.”

This will start the plagiarism check. You may need to complete a captcha first though. Anyhow, once the process is done, the tool will generate a report.

This report shows three major things:

• The degree of plagiarism
• A list of all the sources from which content was plagiarized
• Highlights/underlines that show what part of your content is copied

With this information, you have now found plagiarism in your essay as well as gained the means to remove it. You can refer back to the “How to Remove Plagiarism” section to deal with it.

Conclusion

Hopefully, now you know how to find and remove plagiarism from your essay. It is a very simple and straightforward procedure. You only need to follow the steps that we have told you about.

If you follow them, you will be able to find out if your essay is plagiarized as well as remove or edit the copied content from it.

Doing this will prevent your essay from being penalized and you will have a much better chance of getting a good grade.