Plagiarism is an epidemic that strikes at every academic level, from high school to grad school and beyond. In fact, more than one Ph.D. turned out to have plagiarized his or her dissertation. The majority of plagiarism, however, remains of the cut-and-paste variety, leading to the question of what can be done to prevent plagiarism and save students’ grades. Ofcourse, there are good websites like Oxbridge Notes where the best students upload their notes and essay plans and, if they meet their standards of quality, they sell them through their system. 

Why is it so hard to avoid plagiarism? That question has bedeviled educators for decades, but the recent rise of papers produced by an essay writing service and submitted as students’ own work has given rise to a new type of plagiarism, known as “contract cheating”—papers written by a professional and then misrepresented as the student’s own work.

Why College Students Plagiarize

According to the Psychological Record, 36% of undergraduates admit to plagiarizing on purpose. Additionally, many students plagiarize accidentally, sometimes without ever being told that what they are doing is wrong. All told, 80% of college students in the Center for Academic Integrity study admitted to cheating in college at least once. With so much academic dishonesty going on, it’s no wonder that plagiarism is the #1 form of cheating that instructors encounter day to day. Why, though, do students plagiarize?

There are three major reasons that students plagiarize. The first is that they don’t know what they are doing is wrong. Many students were never taught the right way to work with sources, and so they are uncertain how to punctuation a quotation, how to rewrite material for a paraphrase, or how to appropriately give credit to sources with citations. This type of plagiarism is often considered “accidental” and is generally treated as a learning opportunity requiring remedial assistance.

The second reason students plagiarize is because they are weak writers and think that using other people’s words will make their paper sounds better or smarter. This type of cheating can be attributed to the failures of high schools to teach proper writing skills, but this type of plagiarism is also all too common and familiar to professors, who can easily tell when writing changes from the student’s own inexpert writing to a suddenly smooth and fluid sentence. 

The third reason students cheat is to avoid doing work, either for reasons of time pressure, lack of interest, or contempt for an instructor or assignment. These students purposely copy and paste sentences, paragraphs, or even whole papers. This category also includes contract cheating from essay writing services online. Using an essay writing service can be an effective way to get professional essay help, but only when the paper is used for the purpose it was intended—to serve as a guide for your own original essay.

What to Do About Plagiarism in College Essays

The most important way to avoid plagiarism is not to plagiarize. Categories two and three are easy to avoid: Don’t copy and paste material into your paper without putting any borrowed language in “quotation marks” and citing your sources. By writing your paper in your own words, you will avoid the most obvious forms of plagiarism.

The next question is how to avoid accidental plagiarism, and that can be more difficult since you don’t always know when you’ve done it. The best way to avoid accidental plagiarism is to write in your own words and provide a citation whenever you use ideas from other people. To that end, the most important way you can ensure this happens is to refrain from looking at your sources while writing. If you are reading an article to look for facts and quotes while you write about it, you are more likely to accidentally echo its language. Instead, read the article, remember the fact that you want to use, and then put the article down so you can write about it entirely in your own words without borrowing language.

Along with helpful tips, another way to avoid plagiarism is to use an essay writing service to show you the right way to work with your sources to develop a paper free from plagiarism. Professional essay writers know how to document sources correctly, and a custom written paper can show you exactly how to work with your sources in order to integrate them into an essay with absolutely no plagiarism. This can help you as you work on your paper so you can compare correctly cited material to the original sources and to your own work in your essay so you can be sure you cite correctly every time.