Strategies for avoiding plagiarism

There are several strategies that can be adopted in order to avoid plagiarism. Plagiarism is one of the critical academic evils committed by academic writers in their work. It refers to the practice of a writer taking the work of another person and presenting it as personal without acknowledging the owner of the work. Information plagiarized may include books, songs, televisions, articles, essays and other significant resources. Whenever one uses resources of other people in developing his or her work, he or she should cite the source of the information through internal citation and listing them in the bibliography or reference list. One can use the resources of other people to paraphrase, summarize, copy words, phrases or sentences to his or her work. Therefore, writers should fully acknowledge the source of the resource used for clear citation through in-citation or bibliography in order to avoid plagiarism
There are various strategies that writers use to avoid plagiarism in their work. The first strategy widely used by academic writers to avoid plagiarism is proper documentation of resources used in their contents. Content documentation refers to the acknowledgment of authors of academic work used in developing ones work. The writer documents authors of resources such as books, articles, blogs, newspaper posts, essays, magazines, songs, and artworks. Documentation is the safest and appropriate strategy to avoid plagiarism completely (Campus Library, 2015).
Secondly, academic writers employ another strategy of proper planning before beginning to write academic work. Planning is an important step to make while writing academic papers and presentations since it ensures that one utilizes resources effectively and acknowledges authors adequately. Proper planning also enhances proper choice of works, ideas, statements and phrase to use in the content of the work being produced. Planning for academic writing involves adequate resource search, analysis of identified sources in accordance with the topic discussed and selection of the most appropriate resources to use in executing the academic writing process. Therefore, proper planning is an important strategy used by the writer to avoid writing mistakes such as plagiarism (Campus Library, 2015).
The two strategies of avoiding plagiarism identified have different impact and importance in the academic writing process. In comparison of these strategies, both strategies enable writers to avoid plagiarism in the work. In addition, they are simple to use and important in the writing process since a writer should document resources effectively and have a good plan for writing activities. However, these strategies differ is some aspects. Documentation strategy is more important and effective in avoiding plagiarism than proper planning strategy. A writer must document the resources used in his or her work despite of planning the process. However, the planning strategy is important since it enables writers to select and document resource information effectively.
In conclusion, writers should consider the effectiveness and importance of strategies used to avoid plagiarism. It is important to employ effective strategies that are easy to use in the process of academic writing. A combination of strategies can also be used in order to ensure that the content written is completely free from plagiarism. In addition, other strategies like using plagiarism detectors may be adopted to ensure that contents are plagiarism free.
Reference
Campus Library. (2015). Strategies for Avoiding Plagiarism. Retrieved from http://libguides. uwb. edu/content. php? pid= 87430&sid= 691952