Four things are certain in life, death, taxes, and self-plagiarism. Self-plagiarism is an inevitability that everyone’s writing faces, and it is almost always unintentional. Self-plagiarism is the act of reusing one’s wordings and portions of texts from a previously submitted work.
Writing and Reusing Quotes
Cambridge Dictionary defines quotes as repeating words that someone else has written or said. Quotes can be about anything you want them to be as long as they are original. The quality does not matter as there are some really basic quotes out there too.
Writing quotes may seem like a piece of cake but it is quite challenging if people want good quotes that they can use. As such, while writing quotes there are heavy chances of you self-plagiarizing your own quotes especially if matching themes are involved.
Nothing to worry about as there are remedies for it. To help you remove self-plagiarism from your own quotes, we have tried and tested every method ourselves, and here’s how you can get rid of it.
Eliminating Self-Plagiarism From One’s Citations
1. Rephrase Your Quotes
You take all this time to write a top-quality quote that fits the situation, so naturally, you would want to use it quite a lot when discussing similar topics. Using that much will end up as self-plagiarism on your end and it needs to be removed.
A good way to start would be by rephrasing your quotes. The most basic way of rephrasing is by means of synonym usage. You simply replace the words in your quotes with new ones that match the original’s idea. However, the use of synonyms alone is not enough, and your quote will still end up getting labelled for self-plagiarism.
Additional efforts are required on your end to fix this such as changing sentence structures in conjunction with synonym application. Activities such as swapping sentence order, using linking words, and use of alternate voices as well as synonyms are enough to remove self-plagiarism from your own quotes.
“When you educate a man in mind and not in morals, you educate a menace to society” Franklin D. Roosevelt
Rephrasing this quote would be something like this:
“You educate a menace to society when you educate a man in mind and not in morals.”
This “new” quote has the same meaning, but the emphasis is changed. Shuffle your quote’s sentence order in this manner. Linking words may also be applied if the sentence order is not flowing naturally after rephrasing.
2. Context is Important
We have established that repeated usage of your own quotes will lead to self-plagiarism, yes, but there is another way around it. It is providing a different context or removing the context that causes self-plagiarism entirely. The context, in this case, means providing a different backdrop or unique perspective to your quote.
We tend to repeat our quotes if they fit the context effortlessly. After all, everyone has a few quotes for specific circumstances, and they use them to further strengthen their points. To demonstrate this, we are using the example of a Benjamin Franklin quote,
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interests.”
This is a clever play on finance terms to describe the payoff of education. If one were to use this quote over and over when the circumstance is about education, then we would suggest administering a different backdrop to circumvent self-plagiarism. Distinct here is that you prelude this quote by explaining what investments and interests are.
You could also erase self-plagiarism by providing a unique perspective to your quotes. Taking the above quote as a sample, you could inform readers about your personal experiences with investments and interests. That fresh take will be enough to eliminate self-plagiarism.
3. Seek Feedback From Relevant Persons
Whether the use of your own quotes counts as self-plagiarism is a questionable matter that people still debate. There are different schools of thought when it comes to quotes but who better to rely on to guide you than your peers and mentors?
Definitely, your peers and mentors have written before, and they will have strong opinions on this matter. Listen to their advice if you are stuck and cannot figure out if you are self-plagiarizing. A different pair of eyes to give constructive criticism never hurts anybody.
Keep notes of the quotes that you have used in writing to show relevant people so they can assess the situation properly.
As a company, we keep track of our employees using their quotes so that they do not accidentally commit self-plagiarism and our reputation is called into question.
4. Removing Self-Plagiarism With The Help Of Plagiarism Removers
“Time is money” is based on an aphorism (pithy observation containing truth) believed to have been coined by Benjamin Franklin. It implies that saving your time is equal to saving your money. We understand that time is a luxury that not everyone can afford.
“Working hard and working smart can be two different things” Byron Dorgan.
The use of these quotes is not accidental. We are trying to get across the point that while the option of manually removing self-plagiarism will always be there, does not mean it is the most effective one. There are certainly better ways to remove it that do not involve burning time or working harder than usual.
A simple option we often use around ourselves to remove self-plagiarism is online plagiarism removers. They are simple to use and get the job done quickly, which is our priority. Each online tool is different from the others because of a few quirks. The quirk we look for in a tool these days is the use of AI in its working like how plagiarism remover has implemented it.
The word changer and AI remover modes of this plagiarism remover are based on NLP (Natural Language Processing) and Deep Learning technology to ensure unique results. To display the smoothness of language and unique results, we used one of our writer’s best quotes to see the outcome.
And here is how it removed their self-plagiarism:
Use the ‘AI Remover’ to remove self-plagiarism with the help of AI in a nonchalant way.
Conclusion
Humans are creatures of habit. They are designed to follow their own habits whether good or bad. It can take people anywhere from 18 to 254 days to form a new habit. Write enough material and it becomes a habit almost instinctively. Using your quotes repeatedly in scenarios that fit is a habit that not everywhere is aware of.
Self-plagiarism is a form of academic dishonesty, and your professional integrity gets called into question. While nowhere near as bad as good old plagiarism, it is still not right to plagiarize, even yourself. The matter of ethics comes into play.
Our policy is simple. Keep notes of your previous submitted work and compare those documents before publishing or use plagiarism removers if you did not heed our first advice. The ball’s in your court.
