The necessity of avoiding plagiarism in academic writing

People can get tempted by plagiarism and it has several reasons. Suppose, a student has a desire to get a better grade or he has a lack of time before submitting his final paper or the student has a lack of confidence with the ability of writing. These are the reasons that can lead a student to plagiarise his academic words. If the students can focus on the reality they can understand that there are better reasons to avoid plagiarism. More importantly, avoiding plagiarism can improve their quality of writing. If the students have problems with their writing, they should identify them first. They also need to have critical thinking ability. The practice of academic writing can improve their writing and thinking skills. That means the students will be able to learn about several ideas to answer a question.

Figure 1: Consequences of Plagiarism

Reasons for avoiding plagiarism

To avoid plagiarism, students can write on their own terms of languages. For example, a student is writing from a secondary source. In that case, he has to read and understand the article properly. Then he can write with his own words on the basis of his understanding. The students also need to struggle to understand the concept or ideas of the research topic (Fazilatfar et al. 2018). It will also help them to voice their own words. The people who try to plagiarise words from other sources may have no idea about the penalties of plagiarism after getting caught. There are few ways to avoid plagiarism that can the students. That includes quotations, paraphrase, and summaries.

Figure 2: Tips to avoid plagiarism

Avoid plagiarism

The use of quotations means using the exact same words from the source and enclose them with quotation marks. At the time of checking plagiarism, the quoted word will not be considered as the plagiarised words. The second best option is paraphrasing. It refers to the process of writing the concepts and ideas from the sources with their own words. The paraphrased lines are mainly shorter than the original one. The students have to write more words with specificity. The writers also can write here with simple language. But they have to concern about the ideas of the original source (CMSW, 2021). That means the writings should be understandable for every reader. Maintaining the quality and the concept of the sources is the most important factor to be remembered at the time of paraphrasing. Students also can summarise the source. In that case, they have to be concerned about the main ideas of the source. The major facts in the source should be contained within the academic writing.

Plagiarism also can happen accidentally. It can occur due to the lack of understanding of the cultural conventions of citation and academic writing. Sometimes the writers can get confused by the cultural aspects and also the concepts can appear to them with difficulties to understand. The writers or the students also have to understand that citation is an important thing here in terms of paraphrasing. Sometimes the students or the writers plagiarised unintentionally but there are consequences and these are the same for all.