How Do You Know if Your Essay Is Original

When writing an essay, it is very important to write something that is not plagiarized. You can accomplish many things when writing essays, but plagiarizing is not one of them. Even the smallest amount of plagiarism will cause your paper to be thrown out and failed. So how do you know if your essay is original?

1) Respect the Law

You cannot violate copyright laws or any other written rules or regulations on works submitted for publication. If you do, those pieces cannot be published by the company that shared those guidelines with you in the beginning. Also, even though there are certain times where it might be okay to quote a specific piece of work from their website as long as you take caution, this should always be done after checking to see if that is allowed.

2) Use a Thesaurus

When writing an essay, using the same words over and over again will bore the reader and make them want to stop reading what you have written. If your essay lacks in vocabulary, then it will be apparent in your work and it would be easy for someone to tell where you copied from or paraphrased another person’s work. Using a thesaurus will add more words to your palette when writing essays.

3) Double-Check Your Work

No matter how much time you put into writing an essay, having one mistake could cost you everything. Have at least two people proofread every piece of work that you submit to someone online before submitting it somewhere else just in case you missed something. If you did not, then it would be a great way to get additional feedback and continue writing.

4) Research What You Write About

Never write about anything that you do not know much about because this will show in your work. Even if it is just facts, use facts from places other than Wikipedia, because Wikipedia can be edited by anyone and therefore the facts on there are never 100% accurate. Instead of using Wikipedia, go to another website such as ScienceDaily or The Institute Of Physics and find something that is interesting to you and use their facts to research what you want to write about before submitting any essays.

5) Take Steps Back From What You Are Writing

If you find yourself getting tired when writing essays, it might be because your essay is not original. Take a couple of minutes to break to clear your head before continuing on with what you are writing about. This way, when you come back, you will have more ideas to work with and can continue writing without any problems.

6) Do Not Copy What Others Have Written

Even if it is only one sentence that may seem irrelevant to your essay, do not copy what someone else has written verbatim anywhere in your essay. Even though this would not show plagiarism at all because there are small differences between how American English is written compared to British English or Canadian English, doing so will still leave your essay open for scrutiny by professors who might know the difference between these three branches of the same language.

7) Keep Notes on What You Write About

If you are writing about more than one topic, it is important to keep notes of what you write about so that you remember the details. This will be helpful when writing essays because some topics might not go with each other and therefore should not be in the same essay together. Having good notes on what you write also helps you write faster because there is no need to re-write your research down on paper before continuing on with your essay. Just refer back to the notes that you have made when needed and continue writing without any problems or distractions.

8) Be Aware of Contractions

Using contractions such as “it’s” instead of “it is” could give away the fact that you copied from somewhere else because not everyone uses contractions in their essays. This also applies to using slang terms, such as “u” instead of “you”, in your writing which could make the reader feel distanced from what you are trying to convey because everything seems informal and not professional.

9) Never Use Plagiarism Checking Software

Using plagiarism checking software when writing an essay will only show you where you have used exact wording from a certain place and it will not actually prove if all of your work is original or not. Therefore it is important to never use any websites or programs that claim to be able to tell how original your essay is because doing so might give away the fact that there are parts in your essay that are not your own work.

10) Limit The Amount of Quotes

Using quotes from other people’s work is okay but do not overdo it because then you will be giving away the fact that there might be parts of your essay that are not original. Instead, limit using quotes to only one or two per 1000 words and write the rest yourself. This way your essay will still sound like something you wrote and it will still show originality even though you used quotes here and there throughout it.

Good luck!