Plagiarism has always been a prevalent problem in the education sector and the publishing sector. Many students and professional writers have been caught trying to plagiarize, while others have gotten away with their crimes.
However, thanks to plagiarism detection and prevention software like Turnitin, professors, and editors are better positioned to catch students and writers who commit plagiarism.
However, students continue to employ different tactics to cover up plagiarism in their papers and new tactics each day. Some of these techniques are effective in cheating the plagiarism detectors, while others are not.
This revelation brings to the question, does Turnitin detect white text?
To answer this question and several others on this matter, kindly read this article thoroughly to the end.
What is White Text?
White text is a stream of words and phrases that have been typed in white color or whose background color has been altered to make the text look white. White text is used on various occasions with different background colors and for different reasons.
First, different platforms use white text on their websites to enhance readability on their sites. This is because white text improves the contrast of letters, mainly when used with a dark background color such as black.
These platforms prefer to use white text to black text because it is appealing, uncommon and most people love it.
Consequently, a white text involves inserting additional keywords on an electronic document using a white font on a white background. This technique is mainly used by platforms that want to increase traffic in their web pages where they use a keyword multiple times but want to hide it.
Furthermore, employing white text is a technique used by students who wish to avoid plagiarism detection by hiding some phrases and texts from the plagiarism detection platforms.
Why Students Want to Use White Text to Avoid Plagiarism
Students want to use white text to avoid detection because they get away with it most of the time. They usually use this cheating technique when they are too lazy to write original pieces of writing from scratch. In addition, they use white text when they do not want to cite their sources and, therefore, want to take full credit for the submitted paper.
Remember, using white text involves the student including various special characters and spaces in white between words in the text.
The added special characters and spaces are invisible by the teacher’s human eye. Primitive plagiarism detection and prevention software cannot detect the white text and, therefore, they will not flag the paper for plagiarism.
Another way that students take advantage of the white text is when they submit their articles in PDF formats. Remember, PDF files consist of multiple layers, the visible layer, and the invisible layer.
These students take advantage of these layers and include the 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.
Does Turnitin Detect White Text?
Turnitin does detect white text. It is vital to note that Turnitin contains a helpful product known as Feedback Studio that provides the Flag Insight Panel.
The Flag Insight Panel is responsible for identifying the student’s spaces covered up using the white text. This panel identifies the different cases where each flag appears in the text, highlights the questionable characters, and notifies your instructor.
Also see: Does Turnitin Check Images?
Therefore, as a student, refrain from using white text as a method of cheating because if your instructor runs your work through Turnitin, they will definitely know that you cheated.
In return, you will be in trouble for committing plagiarism, and you may face severe consequences for infringing your institution’s ethics code. Remember, expulsion is a possible punishment.
Is Using White Text a Good Way of Cheating Turnitin?
Using white text is not an excellent way of cheating Turnitin. Unlike other primitive plagiarism detection and prevention software, Turnitin has a way of rejecting words that contain white texts because of their peculiar word lengths.
In addition, through its Feedback Studio feature, this platform has the ability to display all the words and phrases in your paper no matter what color you have used.
Top Tips on Cheating Turnitin
First, you need to note that none of the methods discussed below is 100 percent perfect for cheating Turnitin. However, depending on the effectiveness at which you employ any of these techniques, you will reduce the similarity score by a considerable margin.
Some of these most efficient ways that you could use to cheat Turnitin include;
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Paraphrasing Your Paper
Remember, Turnitin uses state–of–the–art AI that detects plagiarism by comparing streams of similar words and phrases and sentence structures in your paper and those in its large repository. It becomes pretty hard for Turnitin to detect any similarity issues in your work when you do so.
However, by paraphrasing your paper, you substitute some words with their synonyms and alter most of the sentence structures so that your paper looks new. Citing your sources properly will be an added advantage.
Also see: Can Turnitin Detect Spinbot?
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Hire a Professional Essay Writer
This method is one of the most effective techniques in cheating Turnitin. When you hire an experienced expert essay writer to write a paper for you, they do thorough research and deliver a high-quality, well-cited, original paper.
When you submit such a paper through Turnitin, it will not detect any trace of plagiarism.
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Alter the Format of Your Paper When Submitting
Another excellent way to cheat Turnitin is submitting your paper in PDF format. Remember, as earlier mentioned, a PDF file consists of a visible and an invisible layer.
Turnitin does not read PDF files and will not, therefore, recognize any form of plagiarism in your paper. The only issue with this method is that your professor may ask you to submit the paper in Word format.
Also see: Can Turnitin Detect Copy and Paste?
Conclusion
So, after reading this article, it is clear that Turnitin is an effective plagiarism detection and prevention software because of its ability to detect plagiarism even when students have employed various tricks to cheat it.
Therefore, when you ask a question like, does Turnitin detect white text? The answer to this question will be a confident yes.