By: Shawn Cox
Submitted: 2010-12-24 17:10:40 | Word Count: 451
They say that in this world when everything is within reach, students who need a well-written term paper only have to log on in the Internet and their problem is quickly solved. Well not exactly. Many students easily get overwhelmed by the intellectual discourse of their custom term paper that they would not even take time to consider if the work they received is authentic or wasn't copied from someone else's work. The thought of possibly putting their academic career in jeopardy for violating the anti-plagiarism law don't even cross their minds once they received what they paid for. Though most of the companies offering custom essay and custom term paper services guarantee original works because they use anti-plagiarism softwares, it is still an advantage for students to know how these tools work.
Plagiarism is the unauthorized use or copying of words or ideas of another author. The advent of the digital world has made plagiarism easier than ever. With a few mouse clicks, anyone can copy and paste sentences and paragraphs, or an entire essay to make it appear as if he or she was its author. Anti-plagiarism tools are softwares that scan and cross-references a written work of a student against an electronic database to detect if it had been copied or re-written. This software can detect if the student used the cut-and-paste method to get information from websites, if he bought a custom paper from a company that doesn't submit original work, or if he copied the essay paper of another student. If the plagiarism software finds something suspicious, it will present a report in a convenient format - plain text, HTML files, Microsoft Word and Word Perfect.
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Anti-plagiarism tools can either be web-based (free) or be installed softwares. Search engines like Google and Gigablast are considered the free tools of plagiarism detection; they can search the authenticity of complete sentences or phrases. The drawback, however, of some anti-plagiarism tools – both free and installed - are their limited database. If a professor checks a submitted essay or term paper and its contents are beyond the parameters of a particular tool, the professor might consider the work original. The best thing for a professor to do is still to educate students about plagiarism. Students need to be aware that plagiarism is a combination of stealing and lying, and it's showing disrespect not only to the professor but also to other students as well. Copying term papers or even parts of a term paper robs a student of the wonderful opportunity to discover something new, and the chance to improve his skills in doing research, in analyzing and organizing, in writing, and in managing time.
