Direct copying
Lifting sentences from a source, a website, or a friend's paper and passing them off as your own. The obvious kind, and still the most common.
Plagiarism help
Stay original the real way — not with a fake scanner.
Plenty of sites promise to “check your paper against billions of sources.” We won't pretend to do that here, because a genuine check needs a huge licensed database we can't run in your browser. What we can do is teach you to stay original in the first place, and point you to a real check when you need one.
Being straight with you
This page does not scan your work against the internet or any source database, and it can't give you a “% match” number. Anything online that offers a free instant match score is either very limited or storing your writing. For a true similarity report, use the checker your school already runs (Turnitin or SafeAssign) — more on that below.
Start here
What plagiarism actually is.
It's wider than copy-paste. Most students who get flagged never meant to cheat — they just didn't know these count.
Accidental plagiarism
Forgetting quotation marks, losing track of which notes were yours, or mangling a citation. No bad intent — but it's graded the same way.
Un-cited paraphrase
Reword a source but keep its idea and structure, with no citation? That's still plagiarism. Changing words doesn't change whose thinking it is.
AI-generated text as your own
Handing in a chatbot's paragraphs is a form of it too: the words aren't yours, and you can't defend or cite them. Most schools now treat this as misconduct.
Prevention beats detection
The stay-original checklist
Do these while you draft and a similarity report stops being scary, because there's nothing in there to find.
- Keep a running source list from the very first note — URL, author, page.
- As you take notes, mark what's a direct quote vs. your own words so they never blur.
- Close the source before you paraphrase. Explain the idea from memory, then check you got it right.
- Put quotation marks around any phrase you borrow, even three or four words.
- Cite the idea, not just the exact quote — a paraphrase needs a citation too.
- Cite as you write, not at the end. “I'll add sources later” is how lines go missing.
- Write your own words first, bring in sources to support — not the other way around.
Paraphrasing, done properly
Same idea, but genuinely rethought and cited — not just a few synonyms swapped in.
Not a paraphrase (patchwriting)
Original: “The rainforest canopy hosts most of the region's biodiversity.” → “The rainforest's canopy holds the majority of the area's biodiversity.” Same shape, swapped words. Still plagiarism.
A real paraphrase
“Most species in the region live high up in the treetops rather than on the forest floor (Ortega, 2021).” New structure, your phrasing, and a citation.
A small, honest helper
Long-passage finder.
This is not a plagiarism scan. It only flags long stretches with no quotation marks or citation nearby — the spots most likely to be un-credited. It runs in your browser and reads nothing but your own text.
Nothing leaves your browser
Remember: a clean result here just means nothing looks obviously uncited to a simple text scan. It is not proof of originality. Only a real check (below) compares your words to actual sources.
When you need a real check
Where to run an actual similarity report.
These compare your text to licensed databases of papers, journals, and the web. That's the real thing — and you usually already have access.
Your school's Turnitin or SafeAssign
Most colleges run one of these through the assignment portal. Many let you submit a draft and see the report before the deadline — ask your instructor. This is the same tool that grades you, so it's the one that counts.
Your writing center or library
Campus writing centers and librarians will walk you through a report, explain what a match actually means, and help you fix citations. Free, human, and on your side.
Ask before you trust a random site
Free web “checkers” are often limited, inaccurate, or quietly keep a copy of your work. If you use one, never upload anything private, and treat the score as a rough hint, not a verdict.
The honest path is easier
Cite it well, and you never have to worry.
Originality isn't about beating a scanner — it's about giving credit as you go. Let us format your sources cleanly, and read the guides for the parts that trip everyone up.