Plagiarism Tools Online Source Text Student Original Similar

The "rise" (increased use and popularity) of the Internet has made it "easier than ever" (easier than ever before) for students to copy others' work and present it as their own for "academic assignments" (homework). Many teachers and university professors are responding by using online tools to "detect" (find) plagiarism.

"Manual detection" (finding plagiarism without the use of tools) is difficult, because the individual must have read the source material and remembered exactly what it said. "Computer-assistance" (with help from a computer) detection is much easier, because a computer can compare a very large number of source materials against a piece of text that has been "excerpted" (with a small part taken out) from the student's "submission" (what a student has presented to the teacher).

Many of the online tools can check for different levels of plagiarism. The most basic ones can "highlight" (put in another color for easy identification) sections of text that are "verbatim" (with exactly the same words) with the original sources. More advanced tools can identify instances of "word substitution" where the student has copied the same sentence structure as the original source, but has changed out some of the words with "synonyms" (words that have similar meanings) to try to avoid getting caught for plagiarism.

One of the most commonly used "plagiarism checkers" (tools that detect plagiarism) checks for plagiarism from websites. Users on the plagiarism checking website can enter the "URL" (website address starting with http://www...) of a website and it "returns" (presents) a list of websites with "identical" (the same) or similar "content" (text).