Creating unique content is no cakewalk. With so many words, phrases, and quotes surrounding us, crafting something one-of-the-kind requires a great deal of time and effort on your part. To this end, plagiarism is a common issue, be it web content or academic texts.   

Despite the great variety of plagiarism definitions, all of them revolve around the same idea: trying to
pass off someone else’s content as your own. 

Duplicating content can affect your search engine rankings, bang up the credibility of your blog or
website, take you to court, and even damage your career. 

How to Avoid Plagiarism 

Probably, the most intimidating fact about plagiarism is that it can be unintentional. 

Luckily, you can avoid it by following simple steps.  

Start with the Research 

Before getting to writing your piece of content, make sure to read a wide range of materials on the
topic. This strategy will reduce the possibility of you unintentionally replicating someone’s ideas,
formatting, and style. 

What’s more, it’s highly advisable to jot down all your sources.  

Write It on Your Own 

Though reading multiple sources is crucial, this doesn’t mean copying and pasting someone else’s
work or even paraphrasing it. 

In fact, the main purpose of any research is to trigger your own thoughts, so you can create unique
and useful content.  

Cite Properly 

On the other hand, adding external content can make your text more credible, which is especially
critical for academic texts. In this case, you shouldn’t forget to place the cited content in quotes
(if it isn’t paraphrased) and provide the source link.
If you are writing for a blog, there are no strict citation rules. 

However, when it comes to the higher education environment, you should follow the academic citation
style (APA, MLA, Harvard Style, and beyond) required by the specific institution. 

Republish Wisely  

There are instances when you need to republish your text. If you don’t want the republished text to
affect your rankings, you should use the canonical tag to let the search engines know where the
original text is located. 

To learn more about this tag and how to use it properly, follow this link. 

Use Anti-Plagiarism Software 

Even if you stick to all the rules listed above, your text is not immune to plagiarism.
This is especially critical when you entrust your texts to other writers. 

With that being said, it is a good idea to run your texts through automated anti- plagiarism software as soon as you finish them. Luckily, there is an immense variety of text uniqueness checkers, which will make the entire process a breeze without compromising on the accuracy. 

Examples of Plagiarism Checkers: Unicheck 

All plagiarism checkers fall into two groups: standalone online tools with a limited scope of features
and more sophisticated plagiarism detection software for a professional environment.  

The first group caters to the needs of individual users. Requiring no fee, such checkers are usually registration-free and extremely easy to use with nothing but a field where you paste the text and a “Check” button. 

However, since they compare text against online sources, accuracy is not their strong point. That’s why, if you run your text through a couple of online checkers, the uniqueness percentage
may vary drastically. 

On top of that, security breaches are not uncommon if you work with plagiarism checkers online.  

If you are not ready to juggle several uniqueness checkers to get more accurate results, or even
bother with manual checks, we strongly recommend you turn to more complex software solutions,
like Unicheck. 

Thanks to its sophisticated search algorithms and enormous capacity, Unicheck provides a highly
accurate similarity percentage with a detailed report. 

Working with this anti-plagiarism tool is smooth sailing: along with a neat and straightforward dashboard, Unicheck comes
with API access, as well as Google Docs, G Suite, and Office 365 add-ons. 

How Unicheck Works 

To start working with Unicheck, you’ll need to go through a quick registration process, upload your
text, and hit the “Check file” button. 

In a few seconds, you will receive a similarity percentage and a downloadable report where
plagiarized content, citations, and references will be highlighted in yellow, blue, and purple.
If you click on the sentences displayed in yellow, you’ll see a list of sources from where the text might
be copied. 

Since Unicheck is able to recognize all common citation styles, citations won’t affect your similarity
rate. 

As a cutting-edge duplicate checker for academic settings, Unicheck can also be used by university and college teachers to check
plagiarism in students’ works. 

As soon as students submit a text, teachers receive the plagiarism check report, which they can view
on their own dashboard. Unlike other cheating detection tools, Unicheck allows educators and editors
to compare the submitted texts against their internal library.

In addition, with the help of Emma (an AI-based authorship verification agent), Unicheck can make out the author’s individual writing style and show whether the person who submitted the piece has, in fact, written it.

Thanks to Emma, detecting contract cheating (and putting essay mills out of business) has become
much more effective.

Conclusion

In the 21st century, when it’s become so easy to copy and paste a text, plagiarism is still
unacceptable, whether you are a blogger, a marketer, a journalist,  scholar, or a student.

Since plagiarism can lead to unpleasant consequences, you should do your best to get rid of it right from the doorstep. Though conducting profound research, citing properly, and using canonical tags are effective forms of plagiarism prevention, none of them offer a 100% guarantee. That’s where plagiarism checkers come into play.

Depending on what level of accuracy you are aiming for, you can choose between primitive online
checkers or sophisticated anti-plagiarism software tools, like Unicheck.

By using machine learning, Unicheck distinguishes between plagiarized content, citations, references, and can verify authorship.

Visit their website to find out more about Unicheck.