Countering the menace of plagiarism by effective check and control

A Story by William Stark

Duplication of any sort, accidental or deliberate is a punishable offense and with advanced checks and filtering these days, achieving the best results has indeed become possible.

Adopting short cuts in any task is not something new. Though some are acceptable when seen from the standpoint of immediacy, there are few that defies work ethics and harms one’s reputation. Plagiarism is one of that kind. Whether you work as a writer, a teacher or a journalist, plagiarized copies seems to haunt all. Especially after internet has made a foray and practically changed the way the world thinks and works, it is not uncommon for web owners and educational institutes to perform quick plagiarism checks by adopting suitable means in tackling the issue.

For those who are new or even caught unawares with the potent peril called plagiarism, it is basically an act of copying, pasting, printing or publishing someone else’s work and passing it off as one’s own, without assigning due credit to the concerned person. In short, this kind of ‘burglary’ is plagiarism.

In everyday writing, producing rich and exclusive work of oneself without necessarily resorting to various sources is commonplace. Instances like dragging paragraphs, phrases or for that matter along with punctuation marks is not unexceptional either. Why stay confined within the domains of academic or content writing only? Even authors are not spared of this ugly issue. In one of the interviews with a reputed writer, he was simply dumbstruck after finding his work published in the name of another. What added to the woes was that sections of his texts were lifted and incorporated with some other ideas. Unfortunately, his work never saw the light of day!

Avoidance of plagiarism is no doubt mandatory. However, there are cases that sometimes entail a person to resort to the work of others. Especially for students, cultural confusion or understanding difficult concepts at the time of working in their dissertation poses serious problems. Sometimes they also turn certain passages and words into their own, which is often termed as botched paraphrasing. All of them qualify for ‘intellectual theft’. The fact is whenever you have doubts of any kind, enquire your lecturers. Besides, by asking your authorities, you not only put yourself in a better situation than others but also stay wary about plagiarism occurrence and stay miles away from it. Recently, a professor from a leading university expressed deep anguish at having found his students submitting a so called thesis, which only reflected the scant research done for the project. When asked how he detected the crime, he thanked the plagiarism detecting software installed in the computer of the institute.

Over the years, Google has garnered a tremendous fan following for having the easiest modes of plagiarism checks. Of course there are other tools, but using Google spares many of unnecessary expenses and time as well. Besides, the accuracy that Google filters offer in checking plagiarized copies is far better than many others in the industry. Now that Microsoft’s new Bing search engine is the talk of the town, many find it equally reliable. Even Yahoo has held onto a sizeable minority.

Duplication of any sort, accidental or deliberate is a punishable offense and with advanced checks and filtering these days, achieving the best results has indeed become possible.

Prepared using the