There are any of a hundred different reasons in a hundred different professions for checking for plagiarism. The most obvious ones, of course, are teachers and professors. They routinely have to ensure that a student didn’t “borrow” from someone else in their essay.
Many other professions also need to use plagiarism checkers as well, though. Journalists, writers, and others all need to make sure their content is one hundred percent original. It’s not a surprise, either, that students getting an education also need to check for plagiarism essays for plagiarism, as well. So, where can one check for plagiarism free? Everyone would like to have one for free, though! Here’s a “how-to” guide:
An Online Plagiarism Checker Costs Money
Many of these checkers are usually included in other software as an extra feature. In other words, it will do a check, but only as part of its premium package, which you have to pay for. Others make plagiarism checking part of their primary function, but that kind of software tends to be only accessible by means of a paid subscription.
Some Free Online Plagiarism Checkers Are a Deception
One of the most common things to happen with websites that claim to have a free plagiarism checker is to pull what is traditionally called a bait-and-switch. An Internet search for a free online plagiarism checker for students, for instance, will result in a site claiming to have one.
When one clicks on it, however, they find a website that doesn’t have one at all or it has supposedly has a link to one. Clicking on that second link, however, only results in being directed to an unrelated page. This amounts to nothing more than deceptive advertising.
A Free Plagiarism Checker Isn’t Always Free
There are some online sites that claim to have the best plagiarism checker for free, but again there are a couple of drawbacks:
First, the reason why they have a free version of their plagiarism checker is to give you a taste of what the full version can do. Yes, that free version ends up being a kind of trial that is really just an advertisement for a paid package.
Second, they want you to get a full subscription, so they limit what the free version can do. Much of the time, you can only check about a thousand words at a time. This can be problematic for anyone checking a larger document, as it can’t check the entire document for unoriginal content, but only pieces of it at a time. This can lead to inaccurate results.
Free Plagiarism Checkers Don’t Have Strings Attached
As evidenced here, there are a lot of ways to go wrong when looking for software to test for originality online. A genuine site that offers a free check for plagiarism doesn’t have any strings attached. This should be the central part of any check for original content online.
Part of finding a good checker online is also to make sure that you don’t have to rely on just one. It’s always good to have a free duplicate checker online just to double-check to make sure that what you’re doing a check on is one hundred percent original. This will save you many problems in the future.
Plagiarism Software Can be a Trial
In some cases, when searching for “check for plagiarism online”, what is advertised as a plagiarism checker free download is not what it seems. People will download software that they think is free only to find out that what they’re really getting is a trial subscription that will require a monthly payment after two weeks or thirty days.
What to Look for in a Free Plagiarism Checker
A genuinely free online plagiarism checker should actually be free, first of all. That means that when looking at one online, check to make sure that it isn’t a tryout for something that’s going to require a subscription. Also, make sure that you’re not getting a trial subscription rather than an actually free checker!
Make sure to avoid misdirecting sites or genuine sites that severely restrict how many words you can check at one time.
