The Best Way For Writing Plagiarism-Free Essay In College

Writing a good college essay is not easy and without proper research and effort, you might end up with something unoriginal and less authentic. Plagiarism in college essays is very common and it is mostly caused by using the wrong approach while writing.

Plagiarism means stealing someone else’s intellectual property or work and presenting it to the world as you own. It is a serious crime that has several repercussions for your personal as well as professional life.

This article is about some of the most effective ways to get rid of plagiarism in your college essays. These tools will save your time and make sure your essay looks original as well as more informative.

Here are some of the best ways for writing plagiarism-free college essays:

1. Do Proper Research

The leading cause of plagiarism in college essays is rewriting some material from a single source line by line. If you are assigned a topic and you find content related to its online, writing it in your own words and using the same structure can lead to plagiarism in your essay.

Instead, you need to visit different sources, websites, pdfs, and books that have something in common with your topic. Taking material from different sources will reduce the chances of plagiarism and it will also make your content seem more well-researched.

2. Use Paraphrasing     

Paraphrasing allows you to convert someone else’s ideas or words into unique sentences that have the same gist or meaning as the original source. Paraphrasing should always be done after carefully understanding and digesting the source material.

You can also use some paraphrase tool to convert certain sentences and paragraphs into different words. These tools are about 90% effective in making your material look organic and we urge you to use these whenever you cannot find a unique way to express a certain idea.

3. Use Plagiarism Checkers

Once you have written some material after careful research and using a paraphrasing tool, the next thing you can do is to go online and check for plagiarism in your essay.

These online tools identify the lines with plagiarism, highlight the sources, and some even provide solutions to get rid of plagiarism.

Using such effective tools can save a bunch of your time and energy while you write, and it can eliminate the risk of intentional or accidental plagiarism. So, always use plagiarism checking tools before submitting your college essay for the best results.

4. Cite Your Source

If you have no way to rephrase a certain concept and you have to put it in your essay as it is, you can add proper citations in your essay to avoid plagiarism.

Citations must include the name of the source, date of publishing, and the essential author information.

You can either include an in-text or a footnote citation based on your writing style or college requirement. You can choose between different citation styles such as APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.

Some people tend to cite their sources in the form of a reference list at the end of the essays which is also a good way to do it.

5. Use Quotation Marks When Necessary

Quotation signs must be included when using an exact definition, analyzing a certain language in your text, and when your aim is to maintain the style of the original author in your own text.

It is done once there is no way for you to paraphrase some text without losing the actual meaning even after using the rephraser tool. Adding only the quotation mark is not enough. You also need to attribute the copied words to the original author or source to avoid plagiarism completely.

6. Keep a Record of Your Sources

When writing a college essay, it is never a good idea to take your material from different sources randomly and not keep track of these sources. 

This leads to several issues down the line since if you plagiarized the content unknowingly from any of these sources, you will not be able to pinpoint the origin.

Keeping a record of your sources will help you figure out how you need to change a certain part of your essay so that it contains no plagiarism. It will also save your time while adding references at the end of your essay.

Final thoughts

So, these are just a few simple yet the most effective ways to write a plagiarism-free essay in college. If you follow these pointers carefully, not only will your writing style improve, but you will also become more skilled at rewriting or paraphrasing which comes quite in handy in your educational career.

We really hope this information proves useful to you and that you are now able to write plagiarism-free essays in college.   

Alexandra is a UK-based tutor and freelance writer, providing home education and academic support in essay writing and English. She helps both UK and international students to secure places at top UK independent schools and universities, and to achieve high grades for IGCSE, A level and IB examinations. She also helps students and professionals brainstorm, communicate clearly and compellingly, improve style and grammar, and meet deadlines. In her free time, she writes short stories and articles about creative writing.