As you may already know, Plagiarism involves reusing someone else’s content and ideas and submitting them as your own. This vice is a form of cheating that most teachers and professors might have found challenging to eliminate, especially in the past.
Today, with the establishment and spread of the internet, instructors and students are better positioned to overcome plagiarism. This is because of the development of plagiarism detecting and preventing software, Turnitin being among the most efficient software available for use among institutions of higher learning.
Turnitin is so effective that most professors and institutions subscribe to its services while students find it as one of the most dreaded software that fights plagiarism. This is why as a student; you may ask; How do you reduce similarity on Turnitin? Read this article comprehensively to the end to educate yourself on this matter.
So, How Do You Reduce Similarity on Turnitin?
Turnitin employs a unique and special AI algorithm that finds identical streams of words and phrases in the paper you submit through it. The platform does so by comparing your text against its massive database of web pages, journals, periodicals, published books, newspapers, and previously submitted papers. Therefore, after comparing your paper against the sources mentioned above, Turnitin generates an originality report indicating the percentage similarity of your article against its sources.
Turnitin’s efficiency is what makes it dreaded by students. However, as stipulated above, this article will provide you with the necessary pointers to help you reduce the similarity on papers that you submit through this platform.
Do Your Own Work
One indisputable way of reducing similarity on Turnitin is ensuring that you write the contents of your document from scratch. Carry out extensive research on the details and content of the paper you wish to write to help you gather the necessary information.
This involves looking up information from different sources, either physical or on the internet, and arranging the facts to form an idea of what your piece of writing will entail. The traditional sources of information such as books in the library should be your more preferred option.
After you have the necessary pointers together, form a rough sketch of your essay and start writing it using your own words and style. By doing so, you will be generating an original piece of writing that nobody else has ever published on the internet or presented to Turnitin for similarity checking.
Therefore, when you submit such a paper to this platform, its powerful algorithm will not be able to detect any similar streams of words and phrases to those in its massive repository.
Paraphrase Effectively
As you may already know, Turnitin catches similarities by comparing different words and various sentence structures. An excellent way to ensure that Turnitin does not catch these similarities is by rephrasing your essay appropriately. Paraphrasing is essentially vital when you ought to use the information on the source document because of its importance in developing your paper, but you cannot write the words as they are.
So, you might be asking yourself; How do you ensure that you paraphrase accordingly? Some of the proven rephrasing techniques involve substituting some words in the text with their synonyms, altering the sentence structures, and changing the tone and style of the piece of writing.
This will help you maintain the original idea from the source document, only that you will have written the paper in your own words that Turnitin cannot detect as appearing plagiarized.
Hire a Professional Essay Writer
Hiring professional essay writing services is an effective way to produce a plagiarism-free paper that will generate a low similarity score on Turnitin. You could employ this technique, especially when you are experiencing writer’s block or you are not in a position to generate a high-quality article within a certain deadline.
Expert essay writers are highly qualified individuals whose main occupation involves composing papers from essays, articles, academic reports, and assignments. Before they produce any paper for you, they will have researched extensively, written the paper, proofread, and edited it. By doing so, they generate a high-quality paper that is well-cited and plagiarism-free within the stipulated deadline. Turnitin cannot detect any portion of plagiarized content in such a paper.
Cite and Reference Your Work Appropriately
When writing a term paper, research proposal, custom essay, article, assignment, or academic report, it is sometimes inevitable to write statements in their original setting or alter them a little. This is meant to maintain their original meaning. An excellent example is when stating Newton’s Law of Gravity. In such a case, cite your sources and include a reference page at the end of the paper.
Whether you are writing your paper in the MLA, APA, or Chicago style, you need to include in-text citations in your paper as per the style you are using. You can also employ footnotes or endnotes. Remember, when citing your source, include the name of the author and the publication date.
Also see: Does Turnitin Check Textbooks?
Consequently, some of the crucial details on the reference page include the name or names of the author(s), the title of the material, and its publication date. Note that even if Turnitin produced a high similarity score even after citing and referencing your sources, your professor would be lenient with you if you had done so effectively.
Add Images and Pictures in Your Work
Numerous students argue that adding images and pictures such as diagrams, graphs, maps, and pie charts could help reduce the similarity score on Turnitin. This platform does not detect such images because they are not actual text and go past the images to the next stream of words.
Nevertheless, any students that employ this technique should be extra careful when inserting the images and diagrams. You should avoid adding too many diagrams because Turnitin may bypass your paper and reject it, claiming it to be a blank document. Therefore, ensure that you blend in text and images. With the text, ensure that you rephrase the words appropriately to ensure that the platform does not detect any similarity.
Change the Document’s Format Before Submission
Changing your paper’s format from word to PDF is probably one of the least used techniques by students to fool Turnitin. Altering your paper’s format to PDF confuses Turnitin as the platform will believe that you composed the article from scratch. This is because although your professor may read a PDF file, Turnitin cannot comprehend the contents in the file. By doing so, you will reduce the similarity score on Turnitin.
Remember, PDF files consist of two layers, the visible layer and the invisible layer. Students take advantage of these layers and include special characters as spaces in the unseen layer. They will later fill up those spaces with numbers, dots, symbols, and letters and cover the characters using white text. In return, most plagiarism detection services will not be able to detect similarities in that paper.
Also see: Does Turnitin Detect White Text?
However, there is a complication that you may face when employing this technique. This setback may happen when your professor indicates that you should only submit your work in word format. It will be impossible to alter the document’s format in such a case, which means that you will be caught for plagiarizing.
Employ Quotation Marks
The application of quotation marks is essential when you have to lift some statements from the source document, with excellent examples being idioms and quotes. When you use quotation marks with such phrases, Turnitin does not consider the text plagiarism, reducing the similarity score.
It is vital to note that the double quotation marks are the ones to employ instead of the single quotation marks. Furthermore, avoid using so many quotes as this may indicate your reluctance to conduct extensive research.
Check for Similarity Before Final Submission
This technique to reduce similarity on Turnitin can only happen when your professor has allowed you to check your paper before making the final submission. As a student, you have the liberty to run your work through Turnitin and generate a similarity report before the final submission. In fact, different educational stakeholders regard this procedure to provide a true learning power for the student.
Also see: Does Turnitin Detect Self Plagiarism?
By generating a similarity report, a student will interpret the report and see the papers’ portions that appear similar to their sources. Doing so enables them to correct the mistakes by rephrasing those portions or writing them afresh. In addition, the procedure will help them cite and reference their sources appropriately so that when they make a final submission, the paper will be free of plagiarism errors.
When the professor runs such a paper through the platform, the similarity score will be low or even zero.
Conclusion
By answering the question; How do you reduce similarity in turnitin? You are better positioned to write an essay or an article that will be more plagiarism-free. Therefore, employ the following pointers when writing your paper next time and be sure to reduce similarity on Turnitin.