My works cited page is coming up as plagiarized, what can I do to fix that? It was uploaded on a website called blackboard. That is where I have to turn in my research paper.

Question

anonymous · Answer

This is only my rough draft

jagatuba · Answer

Standby. I'll run it.

jagatuba · Answer

This usually takes a few minutes so be patient.

anonymous · Answer

That's okay, Thank you for doing this! This is one of my first papers I've ever written and it determines my grade for a whole quarter so I'm a little nervous

jagatuba · Answer

Don't sweat it. I will give you a full report showing exactly the areas that are being flagged. What percentage did your checker give you?

anonymous · Answer

27%, I highlighted everything that was and it was only 3 direct quotes and the majority of my works cited page, nothing else in my paper came back as plagiarized

anonymous · Answer

It*

jagatuba · Answer

K I'll look it over, if it's only the reference page then you shouldn't have to worry about it at all.

jagatuba · Answer

It's taking a while because Saturday is like the busiest day for checking papers.

anonymous · Answer

I'm just scared my teacher won't accept it since it is about 20%

jagatuba · Answer

You're golden. Let me show you something. As you can see in this screen cap, you are sitting at about 25% quoted material. This includes all of the quotes you use and your works cited page.

anonymous · Answer

So he won't count it?

jagatuba · Answer

Now if we exclude the works cited you come down to 20%. This is too much quoted material in most instances, but you said the instructor would allow 20%.

jagatuba · Answer

I have never had an instructor include the bibliography in the the similarity index. However, since you are sitting right at 20% you might want to reduce your quotes a little to allow room for error. Here is a couple caps showing all the flagged material.

jagatuba · Answer

Now let me draw your attention to the large blocks of colored text. Those are continuous quotes, and they seem to be cited properly. The problem is, your instructor is not going to allow quotes that long, especially the red and blue ones on the second screen cap. You are going to want to go to those and paraphrase that material.

jagatuba · Answer

Well particularly the red. It looks to be well over 40 words.

jagatuba · Answer

Yeah that quote alone is 100 words. that is even too big for a block quote. You need to definitely paraphrase most of that. The quote right above it is 60 words. That should be block quoted. anything over 40 words needs to be block quoted.

anonymous · Answer

This is what mine had highlighted

jagatuba · Answer

If you have time the green text above the blue should be rephrased, because while you were paraphrasing there, too much of it is verbatim from the Internet. You might get dinged for it, but put it low on your priorities for now.

anonymous · Answer

So as long as I paraphrase more of the direct quotes I should be fine?

jagatuba · Answer

Yes.

The dark red above the green is 44 words. Paraphrase or block quote.

jagatuba · Answer

The rest of it looks pretty good but you might want to rephrase the part that says

between shifted positions of the letter E

but that is low priority as well. 

OH and you are missing the end quote on the very first quote. the one ending with 

how the brain responds to music

Not to hard to fix all of these issues. should only take you about 20-30 minutes or so. Run it again when you are done. It should have a lower SI. Also, another good thing to do is that since the checker shows you what you quoted, use that to your advantage to cheek your quotes to be sure you have the quotation marks and citations are done right.

Let  me know if you need anymore help.

I like your thesis by the way. Sounds good and you make a good argument.

jagatuba · Answer

I should ask, are you familiar with block quotes in MLA?

anonymous · Answer

Thank you so much! I go through and paraphrase more, I'll let you know what the percentage is when I submit the final! What website did you use to check? I could only send my draft in once and then I can only submit it again for the final. No I'm not really for sure what block quotes are

jagatuba · Answer

You should be okay. If you need me too check it for you again I will. TurnItIn is the plagiarism checker that my alma mater uses.