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Essay/plagiarism

Given that there's only so many ways that you can respond to an essay question, what if you came up with something original only for it to already exist?

When submitting your text into a plagiarism checker; it will exist on a database so is it possible that you could be done for plagiarism by this also?
Reply 1
Avatar for gjd800
gjd800
20
I'm not sure exactly what you are asking.
just add a yeet here and there and it works
plagiarism software can't deduct an idea from prose and compare it with other texts

they look for phrases similar or identical to other texts that lack citations and generate a score based on the occurrence of similarities

a tutor wouldn't look twice at a score of like 20 (out of a 100), it's only once your essay gets to like 50 that the marker might call you in and ask what happened

especially at undergraduate level, it's highly unlikely you'll come up with a truly original idea because what you're doing has been done by thousands of people before you - many of your essays will be literature reviews
No idea how you'd manage to produce something identical enough to an existing work purely by chance... Bear in mind that it isn't ideas, it is matched text.
Original post by HoldThisL
... a tutor wouldn't look twice at a score of like 20 (out of a 100), it's only once your essay gets to like 50 that the marker might call you in and ask what happened

That depends on the subject and context. I just took a critical "tutors eye view" at a round of lab report submissions and anything over 5% got reviewed in more detail. Turnitin flags up single lines of text or more with clickable links to potential sources for a reviewer. 20% can be fine if its lots of little snippets that are just common phrases, or are well identified and references quotes or book / paper titles in the Bibliography. 2% of gratuitous cut n' paste from an unreferenced source all in one paragraph can be deeply problematic.
Reply 6
Avatar for Anagogic
Anagogic
OP
19
Original post by Mr Wednesday
That depends on the subject and context. I just took a critical "tutors eye view" at a round of lab report submissions and anything over 5% got reviewed in more detail. Turnitin flags up single lines of text or more with clickable links to potential sources for a reviewer. 20% can be fine if its lots of little snippets that are just common phrases, or are well identified and references quotes or book / paper titles in the Bibliography. 2% of gratuitous cut n' paste from an unreferenced source all in one paragraph can be deeply problematic.

What if your essay title only allows for a descriptive response?

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