STRATEGIES TO PREVENT PLAGIARISM

The consequence trailing plagiarism is something not to be joked with by all means. It is a criminal offence in the academic world that attracts the wrath of the law, especially in the United States of America. Therefore, when writing papers or assignments, utmost care must be taken to follow these strategies clearly outlined below.

CITATION:  because representing other authors' works or ideas in one’s own writing without acknowledging them is precarious globally, it is therefore imperative that when a writer utilizes ideas, phrases and research results from other writers in any form, they should be accurately cited. It is just natural to give honor to whom it is due, and that is what citation tends to achieve. While citing a source, efforts should be made to know the accepted pattern of doing so in a region and stick by it. This pattern of citation could be APA, MLA or Vancouver. 


CREATIVITY: as ages go by and the world keeps evolving into different eras, we have now come to find ourselves in an era where creative work is seen as an old wife’s feeble. All roads now lead to the internet to grab already-made articles. The act of brainstorming to generate new ideas is grossly under emphasized. Consequently, writers have become lazy and find it difficult to think out of the box. If writers can once again develop a creative mind, break loose from the confinement of the internet, and quite total reliance on prior knowledge, more works that speak volumes of originality will be produced, and the question of plagiarism will not come on board. In short, the more creative a writer becomes, the less the tendency to plagiarize


REFERENCING: ideas and quotes from other authors should be referenced appropriately. Both the in-text and reference list patterns should be utilized. In-text referencing is the type of reference seen within the write up or article, while reference list is usually the last thing seen at end of the article. All sources of an article should be noted, referenced and a thorough check done before publishing, to ensure that all borrowed ideas and quotes are captured. This is because an oversight of omission usually, cannot be an excuse for plagiarism. If a writer used an idea from his/her own previous work, it is expected that the previous work should be referenced (Jana Dettlaff, college writing class 2017). This is to show how serious the law of plagiarism is.

WRITING ON AREAS OF INTEREST: the last strategy  to avoid plagiarism on my list, is writing on topics that is of utmost interest to one. Interest gives birth to curiosity and motivation, which are keys to effective writing. It gives a person that strong push to think out of the box and to keep searching for answers to puzzling questions. Interestingly, people with  great interest in a topic come up with original solutions to answer natural puzzle surrounding the topic which no one has worked on, and so the issue of plagiarism will not surface at all. 

I think these are concrete ways to avoid plagiarism.