As a writer, ascertaining and making sure my content is devoid of any form of plagiarism or grammatical error is of utmost importance and I go the extra mile to ensure that. Though writing isn’t merely just producing and dishing out grammatically correct content, it’s VERY important.
Plagiarism, on the other hand, is the direct or indirect copy and pasting of someone else’s ideas or words and passing it off as one’s work. This could be difficult to avoid as we come across different content everyday on the net and might end up knowingly or unknowingly using someone else’s ideas and after twitching it up a little, we think it’s become unique. That’s not true, it’s still plagiarized because regardless of the word modifications done, the idea copied can’t be modified and still stands.
You need not worry about your content containing elements of plagiarism or not being grammatically free of errors anymore. There are many tools online that could help with ensuring your content is free of any of the above and I’d be talking specifically about my best two tools (Grammarly and Turnitin.com).
GRAMMARLY
I discovered and started using this tool earlier this year for my grammar and spelling checks and also for proofreading my articles, email contents, sales copies, etc.
Grammarly is a writing tool that will help you check for and fix errors in your writing fast and it’s very easy and straightforward to use. It ensures everything you type is effective and error-free. It’ll help you draft mistake-free content for that sales copy, gmail, Twitter and LinkedIn messages you want to draft. As a freelance writer, I use it regularly for proofreading my contents and it works greatly.
There are several ways to use Grammarly but first and foremost, you’ll create a free account to have access to its properties like its editor. Once you create an account, you can start using the grammar checker tool. To use the software:
1. You can copy and paste your entire article or copy, blog post, or writing into Grammarly for proofreading, grammatical error check and also for a spell check.
2. By clicking on ‘Import’, you can upload a MS Word document containing the article you want to proofread into Grammarly.
3. You can use Grammarly as your primary writing tool or space by writing directly in the tool. Grammarly will automatically start pointing out typo or grammatical errors as you type the words.
4. You can install a Grammarly plugin or attachment on MS Word, if you’re using Windows operating system. This will help detect errors as you write. The attachment isn’t available for MS Word on Mac books.
Grammarly underlines or highlights mistakes similar to what you see in MS Word, almost immediately after you type in your text.
TURNITIN.COM
Turnitin is a great tool to check for plagiarized ideas or concepts. It helps check for originality and it’s a good plagiarism prevention tool. It compares your submitted work with its large database of websites, articles, etc. It’s a great tool for students too and it’s also widely used by them. It helps promotes academic integrity.
Turnitin checks for plagiarism by comparing text of one file with another. It does this in two ways, by comparing the text of a file fed or submitted to its system with anything similar posted online to detect similarity of ideas or words between the file matching content online. It’s effective in giving the score of the comparison, with 0% being original and 100% being copied or plagiarized.
The other way is comparing the text in the file submitted with the files in its own massive database of articles, websites, etc of various users. The above ways make turnitin effective and accurate in detecting contents that have been used or uploaded before by one user and being repeated by another.
Turnitin software is currently made available only to universities and other institutions. To use turnitin:
1. Go to Turnitin.com
2. On the dashboard, Go to Assignments
3. Click Add – It displays space to Add assignment or article
4. Under Assignment,
Type in the name of the assignment, add respective date(s) and select “Single uploaded file only”.
5. Under Turnitin Service, check and mark “Use Turnitin”. This will display the tool properties options to select from. Select the appropriate ones.
Notes;
- Under “submit paper in the following repository:”, there are None and Standard Paper Repository. Select None if you don’t want the file to go into Turnitin’s paper repository after the originality check has been done. Select the other option if you want it to go into their repository to be checked against other papers that’ll be submitted to Turnitin.
- Under “Generate originality reports:”, there are Immediately and On due date. Select immediately if you want the copies of the file or paper to be sent immediately to Turnitin for checks or on due date if you want the opposite.
- Under “Check originality against:”, there are Turnitin paper repository, current and archived internet, periodicals, journals and publications and institution-specific repository. Select and checkmark the boxes of the ones you want your submitted file to be compared with.
6. Complete the assignment form then click post.
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Yeah. Thanks for helping.