What is plagiarism and how can you "avoid" it?

Well yes, the age-old enemies: the university student and plagiarism, David and Goliath.

Plagiarism or plagiarizing is when you mark someone else's work as your own in your published work, without proper citation and/or author's permission.

There's nothing wrong with working from many sources - in fact, it actually shows that you've put effort and energy into creating a coherent and relevant research work.

The simplest method is therefore to cite your sources. From that point on, you're no longer plagiarizing. 🤷

Universities thought about this too and created a rule. Maximum X% can be plagiarism in your work (this number depends on the university).

I found a really good text and want to rewrite it, is that plagiarism?

That's called paraphrasing, or rephrasing. Almost everyone does this, it's an open secret.

Sure, you could hold a knife to my throat and declare "that you don't do such things", but think about it a little.

From the materials you learned at university, a thought developed that wasn't yours before - essentially you're just expressing it in your own words. So are you plagiarizing too? 😉

Now that we've cleared this up, we can move on.

If you expand it with your own thoughts, that's "partial plagiarism", but if you cite the part where the "inspiration" came from, it's no longer plagiarism.

Pointbot can help you tremendously with this, just don't forget to expand it with your own thoughts too.

Which is the best plagiarism checker?

Actually, most plagiarism checkers found on the internet aren't worth much, especially the free ones. A real plagiarism checker is a gladiator, a destroyer.

A complex system that monitors many things:

• Word matching with artificial intelligence
• Backtranslation (whether you translate text from elsewhere)
• Monitors most search engine results, and even searches in its own database (which others have uploaded).

How can I "avoid" plagiarism?

I know this is the answer you're craving, so I'll give it to you. The old secret that our grandfathers used to tell each other. (Especially since there was hardly any digital plagiarism detection back then)

First Step - Keyword technique

Let's say you want to rewrite the following text:

"The meaning of HR today encompasses much more than conducting job interviews and filtering out suitable-looking applicants. As the acquisition, retention and management of workforce becomes increasingly emphasized in the modern concept of work, so grows the importance of the professionals dealing with this, namely HR." (source)

The first and most important thing is to highlight the keywords:

"The meaning of HR today encompasses much more than conducting job interviews and filtering out suitable-looking applicants. As the modern concept of work increasingly emphasizes workforce acquisition, retention and management, so grows the importance of the professionals dealing with this, namely HR's importance."

Second step - Sentence transformation, synonyms

From the keywords, completely transform the sentence, write it down based on your own thoughts on how you would phrase it.

After this, replace with synonyms and change the word order.

Pointbot does this automatically when you select Essay Writing:

"The meaning of HR has changed over time, conducting interviews is an important part of the process, thorough screening of candidates is essential, and modern job descriptions reflect HR's current importance."

!!!! Of course, you still cite the source here !!!!

There is 60.00% similarity between the two sentences. Most plagiarism checkers can no longer detect this.

Lesson: If you reduce the similarity between sentences to around 50-60% with pointbot's calculator, the chance of plagiarism will be small. But you're a proper university student, and you cite your sources.

Third Step - I supplement the sentence with individual thoughts.

Why? Because it might happen that someone copies exactly this text, exactly the same way. You further build in your thoughts:

"The meaning of HR defined during thesis writing and the examination period has changed over time, conducting interviews is important, and exceptionally significant part of the process, thorough screening, examination of candidates is essential, and modern job descriptions reflect HR's current importance."

You can easily extract these new words by double-clicking on the word. Then you get a synonym dictionary and can extract additional words.

The result speaks for itself:

This only reinforces the effectiveness of the Keyword - Question - Answer method. Be fair, and always cite your sources, this way your thesis will be more colorful, and you'll also meet the minimum number of citations :)