If you are reading this, you are probably seeking a solution. The one to quite a challenging task: how to copy and paste without plagiarizing and still keep a bit of your authenticity. With so many papers, blogs, books written on every possible subject, it is impossible to write something that is fully original. You might sometimes read an interesting idea on the internet and you want to borrow it without plagiarizing it.

Any time you take someone else’s work and use it as your own, you are breaking copyright law and plagiarizing. Not only can you get in trouble for cheating at school, but you can actually get in legal trouble. Copying content from a source and representing it as yours is not a good idea as it constitutes plagiarism. However, if you use good methods, and avoid quick fixes, you can copy well without it being termed as plagiarism.

What is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is – essentially, ‘borrowing’ pieces of text published elsewhere and incorporating them into your article without any indication that you have done so. Plagiarism is not restricted to words alone: inserting without attribution a diagram or even a photograph taken from elsewhere is plagiarism, as is using others’ ideas or methods. What is unethical is not borrowing itself but borrowing without attribution or without acknowledgement.

Types of Plagiarism 

• Copying and Pasting Plagiarism or Direct Plagiarism

Anytime you copy and paste verbatim from a source and do not give the source credit it is plagiarism. If you do copy and paste a passage word for word, you must put the information in quotations (i.e. ” “) marks and give credit to the author.

• Source-based Plagiarism

Plagiarism may occur because of the different types of sources. For example, when a researcher references a source that is incorrect or does not exist, it is a misleading citation. Plagiarism also occurs when a researcher uses a secondary source of data or information, but only cites the primary source of information.

• Complete Plagiarism

Complete plagiarism is the most severe form of plagiarism where a researcher takes a manuscript or study that someone else created, and submits it under his or her name.

• Style Plagiarism

“Style Plagiarism” takes place when you follow the source material’s structure line by line. Even if you put the information in your own words you’re plagiarizing the author’s style of reasoning.

• Idea Plagiarism

Plain and simple: If it’s not your own idea, you’ve got to cite it unless it’s common knowledge. Examples of common knowledge are things like the sky is blue and the United States is made up of fifty states. If you’re in doubt, cite the source.

• Inaccurate Authorship

Inaccurate authorship or misleading attribution can happen in two ways. In one form, when an individual contributes to a manuscript but does not get credit for it. The second form is the opposite when an individual gets credit without contributing to the work. This type of plagiarism, whichever way it occurs, is a violation of the code of conduct in research.

• Collusion

Any works created as the result of a group effort belong to the group. In other words, the copyright of a created piece belongs to the group as a whole. However, if one member claims the work as their own, they commit a form of plagiarism called collusion.

As you can see, this is quite an extensive list, and involves much more than simply copying content word-for-word without offering a source. This can therefore be both intentional and unintentional, or it can be done willingly or accidentally. Nevertheless, regardless of this, any work identified as being a work of plagiarism will be punished according to the regulations laid out by the university or educational institution. Therefore, it is important to make a note of these different kinds of plagiarism, and to ensure that you do not break any rules in respect of this.

What can you do to avoid Plagiarism while Copy Pasting?

• Rework The Text

Write by reordering the words, by changing the sentence structure, or by presenting the idea freshly from your own perspective. Avoid using similar phrases too much. Change active voice to passive voice. Add more adjectives and adverbs. Take someone`s thoughts from the internet, pull the main idea out and simply use another writing style. Create a story, where the main character explains those thoughts, use some references, use another tense, explain that you’ve done research and concluded

• Synonymize

There are thousands of words in the Oxford Dictionary, and they are all free to use! So why can we not synonymize some words in copied information to use this as a sort of Plagiarism checker hack? By the way, most of the custom writing services, may use this technique to do their job. Therefore, it is quite a successful way to hack essay plagiarism checker in this way.

• Quote

Avoid all the hassle and quote on the source directly. Use quotation marks or quotation blocks with proper citing and you can copy the text word-to-word. Most of the plagiarism tools check only the construction of sentences. However, no one forbids you to quote. First, you do not assign the idea, second, you change the structure, so Plagiarism checkers will not recognize your copy and paste material.

• Understand the context

When doing your research, take the time to understand what well the ideas that you need to discuss in your article. Also, if you use precise published materials as inspiration sources, read them several times to get the main ideas and key concepts. This way, you get to understand the context and can come up with a new structure for the article or blog post. When you have clear ideas, so it is going to be your piece of content as well.

• Use Plagiarism Checkers

Plagiarism checkers like Copyscape, Unicheck, and especially Grammarly, are great for detecting not only plagiarised content from the books (hard copy), but also the rest of the Internet sources.Once we copy and paste a plagiarized text, these tools will highlight the plagiarized bit and show the original sources of the information. However, the advanced plagiarism detectors are not free and will only be available on premium versions.

• Text laundering

All a hypothetical plagiarist needs to do, to evade such software, is to make sure that no more than, say, any given three or four consecutive words are identical to their source. So they can copy and paste, so long as they, let’s say, change the word order a bit, add or remove some filler words like ‘the’, ‘and’, ‘but’, and replace a few words with synonyms. I call this text laundering.

In Summary

In conclusion, in your fight against guarding against plagiarism in your work, you must first educate yourself and learn about the different types of plagiarism, so that you can identify this in your work. You have to be smart when you are copy-pasting someone else’s work. The simple three steps mentioned in this article can help you lend someone else’s idea without worrying about plagiarizing. If you do take such steps, then you can submit your work with a certain degree of peace of mind, knowing that you have done all that you can to reduce the risk of your work being flagged for any instances of plagiarism.