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How Students Can Be Sure Their Writing is Original

Writing assignments are what many students would say is the bane of their existence. That dreaded time of sitting in the library (or at home) trying to squeeze out their thoughts into a cohesive essay can be both intimidating and difficult if writing is not your thing. We’ve mapped out a few ways to keep your writing and originality in check when hoping for an A on every paper.

Carve out Thinking Time

The best way to write is only after an idea has been formed. This may actually be most time consuming part of the writing process-the research! Whether it’s a 20 page or 3 page paper, the percentage of time you dedicate to reading and thinking should be about 50-70% and the remainder goes to the actual writing and editing. There may be many sources you are interested in using but only a limited amount can make the final cut. This is the ideal time to think about what is perfect to get your point across.

Get Highlighting!

While we all love the cool apps and sites that make learning so much fun, nothing beats out old-school highlighting. This will allow you to see all the information you want to include and figure out how to place it in your work so it all flows nicely together. This may be better for larger papers, but printing out your sources or making a photocopy of a quote from a book will save you lots of time when you are scrambling to make sure you include all of the correct information in the references.

Stray from Peer Review

While there are many approaches to how papers are graded, this is one that many teachers have varying opinions on. If there is a writing assignment where the topic is the same for every student (as opposed to choosing a specific book to write about), sometimes too much peer review can mean your papers could end up looking a little too close together. It’s best to have someone not in your class review your paper to give helpful feedback.

Making sure your writing is authentic is a priority anytime you have a major assignment. Before you submit your work, the final step is to do a quick plagiarism scan for originality with Copyleaks!

Find out what's in your copy.