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When You Should Compare Documents for Similarity

We’ve all been there where we have handed in an assignment or are reading something that sounds*just like* that other paper we were reading to grade. It’s a difficult place to be in for either party because you don’t want to wrongly accuse and you certainly don’t want to be thought of as a cheater. Here are a few places that it’s important to be careful you aren’t copying and make sure you compare the text when you’re done.

Partner Assignments

When working with multiple partners on an assignment, but you are each handing in your own paper, it’s important to make sure you each wrote your ideas in your own words. Sitting together and collaborating is great for brain storming but be sure the actual written work is done individually.

Suspected Plagiarism

Notes from Class

Sometimes teachers have so much to cover during the actual class that they prefer to email or hand out printed copies of their overview of notes. These should only be used as a reference and if used at all, cited with the teacher as the author.

Work Documents

It’s always smart to run a plagiarism scan of your work or your colleague’s before adding it to the company blog, sending it to your clients, or publishing it on other sites. With quick news bits, if you feel something looks a little too similar, you’re always better safe than sorry to compare the documents and make sure you don’t get in trouble for words that don’t belong to you.

The Copyleaks Compare Documents Tool makes it very easy to see the differences and similarities between two different documents, blocks of text, and URL. If there is a dispute in a school or work setting about two papers looking too similar, this is a great solution to seeing exactly what is the same. Easily see the highlighted text, similar word count and percentage.

Find out what's in your copy.