How to Avoid Plagiarism
Trent R. Hartzler
Heartland Community College

Abstract
Plagiarism is a common problem in high schools, universities, and everyday life. The object of this paper is to help students of all ages understand how to avoid accidental plagiarism. The biggest mistake that students make when writing a paper, is taking information that isn’t their own, using it in a non-credible way in their paper. Most students don’t understand the proper way to cite information within their paper. This idea is called proper attribution. The original maker of the quote or idea you are using deserves to be credited within your own work. Although a student may be paraphrasing, this does not mean a source doesn’t have to be credited. To avoid accidental plagiarism, a student must understand how to properly site credible information. To better understand how to properly site information, use the purdue owl on the internet to show how to site sources. It gives thorough examples of all different types of citations. Another way to avoid accidental plagiarism is to put your paper into a plagiarism checker such as grammarly. Grammarly is a website designed to have papers uploaded to check for plagiarism. Students can easily upload their paper, and grammarly is synced with a web database of information to check for any types of plagiarism. Using these two methods will help decrease the percentage of plagiarism tremendously.

Plagiarism is a huge problem in today’s society. The more technology that is introduced, the more access people have to documents, the higher the chance that they will plagiarize when creating their own information. Problems with plagiarism occur in high schools, universities, and in everyday life. One type of plagiarism that is most common within student bodies is accidental plagiarism. Accidental plagiarism is the misuse of credible information from another source because it is improperly used or cited within a student’s work. According to Northwestern University, “everyone within their university needs to pay attention to the issue of proper attribution.” This quote comes right from Northwestern University’s website. They warn the faculty and student body to be careful of accidental plagiarism. The idea behind this is proper attribution. Proper attribution is the proper use of citations, whether it is MLA or APA format. The person who came up with the original idea, which is being used in a secondary document, deserves to be credited for their own work. Therefore, depending on the format the student is using (MLA or APA), the student is responsible for properly citing the information used within their text. One way for a student to check his or her work for plagiarism is to use Grammarly. Grammarly is a program online designed for a paper to be uploaded and checked for plagiarism. Grammarly is connected to an online database that links with data all over the internet to check for plagiarism. According to astate.edu, “it (grammarly) will automatically evaluate almost any assignment and will flag all the grammatical and stylistic errors in the writing.” In using Grammarly, students can greatly improve their efficiency in creating their own sentences, and generating their own ideas. Having your own ideas in your piece of work is very important. It is just as important to have other credentials to back up your work. In order to complete your paper as best as possible, the proper use of citations is very important. If students utilize these tools and keep these general ideas of plagiarism in mind, they should be able to complete their work without plagiarism.

References
Using grammarly - faculty. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.astate.edu/dotAsset/7e29e5c6-a1b0-47ff-b1f3-3e263800f1fe.pdf
How to avoid plagiarism. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.northwestern.edu/provost/policies/academic-integrity/how-to-avoid-plagiarism.html