English 123– Rosichan
Avoiding Plagiarism Using Turnitin.com
English 123 #64708 – MW 6-7:50pm – Fall 2015
The whole class will be enrolling in Turnitin.com where you can check your papers for plagiarism as well as
find information on how to cite correctly. Papers may be turned in multiple times up until the due date, and
you may review and use the results to make the necessary changes. After the due date has passed, papers
may no longer be submitted.
Step 1: To enroll, go to www.turnitin.com.
Step 2: If you are new to Turnitin, click on the link at the top right “Create Account,” and skip down to Step
3.
If you enrolled in Turnitin.com in the past, click “Log In” at the top right of the screen, and use your
previous login info (your email address and password). Then click on “Enroll in a class,” and follow the
steps below to enroll in my class.
Step 3: You’ll need to enter the class id # which is: 10519161
Step 4: Next you’ll need to enter the class password which is: Blue
Step 5: If you are a new user, after you’ve signed in for the first time, you will be prompted to change the
password and provide a security question (in the event you forget your password). Write your new password
down and keep it somewhere safe. Note: If you lose or forget your password and are unable to answer the
security question, you will need to contact me, so I can reset your password.
Some Helpful Resources:
Take a look at the “What Is Plagiarism” tab (which takes you to www.plagiarism.org) for useful
information about different kinds of plagiarism and how to avoid it.
Also check out the “Citation Help” tab for information about how to cite different kinds of sources.
How to Submit a Paper to Turnitin.com:
To submit a paper using single file upload (this is the preferred method), please do the following:
1. Log into your account.
2. Click on the title of the class you wish to submit to.
3. Click on the blue “Submit” button for the assignment you wish to submit to. If there is a grey “Submit”
button, submissions are not allowed for this assignment. Please check the assignment start and due dates and
the assignment info icon*.
4. From the "Submit" heading at the top of the page, select the “Single File Upload” option.
If “Cut & Paste Upload” is showing, click on the arrow to select “Single File Upload.”
5. Make sure the file you are uploading is one that is accepted by Turnitin. Turnitin currently accepts the
following file types for upload into an assignment:
Microsoft Word™ (DOC and DOCX)
Corel WordPerfect®
HTML
Adobe PostScript®
Plain text (TXT)
Rich Text Format (RTF)
Portable Document Format (PDF)
Microsoft PowerPoint (PPT, PPTX, and PPS)
Hangul (HWP)
6. Enter the title of your paper in the “Submission Title” field.
7. Select an upload option.
“Choose from this computer” - Browse to a file saved on the computer. Select the file and then click “Open.”
“Choose from dropbox” - Browse to a file saved to your Dropbox.com account and then click “Choose.”
“Choose from Google Drive™” - Browse to a Document file from your Google Drive account and then click “Select.” (You
may need to click “Accept” before connecting).
8. Click the "Upload" button at the bottom.
9. STOP, and WAIT for the next page to appear.
10. Click “Confirm” to confirm your submission.
Important: After your paper is successfully submitted, your digital receipt will be displayed on
screen. The digital receipt has a Submission ID number, which is confirmation that Turnitin has
received your paper. If you do not see a digital receipt with a Submission ID number, then your
paper was not successfully received by Turnitin. The digital receipt is also emailed to you as
well.
*The “assignment info” button is located under the “info” column. Clicking on this icon will
show you additional assignment information:
Additional assignment instructions
Whether late papers are allowed
Whether resubmissions are allowed
Please contact the instructor if you have any additional questions about the assignment.
While it is recommended that students upload papers by single file upload whenever possible, nevertheless,
you may choose to submit by cut and paste upload. To submit a document by cut and paste upload, please
do the following:
1. Log into your account.
2. Click on the class you wish to submit to.
3. Click on the blue “Submit” button for the assignment you wish to submit to. If there is a grey “Submit”
button, submissions are not allowed for this assignment. Please check the assignment start and due dates and
the assignment info icon*.
4. Toward the top of the submission screen, click on the “Submit” pull-down menu and select “cut & paste
upload”. Note: the default submission method is by "Single File Upload" which you are changing to “cut &
paste upload.”
5. Fill in the relevant fields for the submission (eg. name and title).
6. Copy and paste the document you would like to submit in the large “cut & paste your paper:” field. It is
not recommended that you type your document directly in the text field.
7. Click “Upload.”
Note: Submitting a document by “cut & paste” method will only accept basic text. Fonts, formatting,
pictures, multimedia, and anything else which is not “basic text” will be lost.
Important: Once you have uploaded the paper, you should print out or save the digital receipt, which is
displayed automatically on your screen after you submit your paper. The receipt is also e-mailed to you.
Please check your e-mail, including your junk, bulk or deleted file (it is sometimes filtered as spam) for the
digital receipt email.
*The “assignment info” button is located under the “info” column. Clicking on this icon will show you
additional assignment information:
Additional assignment instructions
Whether late papers are allowed
Whether resubmissions are allowed.
Resubmission:
This class will allow students the ability to overwrite their previous submissions until the due date and time
set for the assignment.
Note: Only a single file may be submitted by a student user to any Turnitin assignment. Any second or
subsequent submission will overwrite the original file submission in this assignment.
How to Resubmit to an Assignment:
Resubmitting a paper is handled in an identical manner as a first time submission to an assignment. Follow
the steps for a first time submission as listed above.
Important: Originality Reports for any resubmission will require an additional twenty four hour delay to
generate. This applies to all submissions past the first submission made by any student user in any
assignment.
Viewing Submitted Files:
After a submission has been completed it will be immediately available to view from the class
portfolio page for the student. Every paper that has been submitted can be viewed by clicking on
the “View” button next to the assignment.
After submitting your paper, you may access the Originality Report by following these steps:
1. Sign into your account.
2. Click on the title of your class
3. Under the “Similarity” header, click on the percentage or the color coded box to view the Originality
Report
4. The Originality Report will open in a new window.
Note: If the icon is a grey box with dashes or if you see the word “processing,” please allow additional time
for the report to be generated. Resubmitted papers can take 24 hours to generate a new Originality Report.
How to use and interpret the percentage as well as the report:
Similarity refers to anything in your paper that matches material found in another source, including
quotations. (Quotations should come up as similar.)
You want to see an Originality Report (with quotations included) that is green and 20% or under. Blue is 0%,
but if you’re quoting, and you should be, there should be some similarities. If a report is in the yellow,
plagiarism is more likely, and if a report is red, there is a clear danger of plagiarism. However, it is possible
for a paper to have a low percentage of similarity and still have plagiarized. I do check what matches, not
just the percentage.
Important: Remember whether you paraphrase/summarize or quote material from a source, what comes
from the source and the source itself need to be clearly and correctly identified. Also, everything in a
quotation should match the original exactly (except what you change correctly using ellipsis or brackets).
You can find out if your similarity percentage is based on quotation usage by checking the filter icon at the
bottom toward the right (looks like an hour glass) to exclude quotations (or the works cited if there is one)
and see how that affects the percentage.
If the percentage is high due to your use of quotations, you can decrease the similarity percentage by
removing or shortening quotations, but this is just one way to decrease the percentage; if the quotations are
relevant, consider, instead, adding more of your own interpretation/analysis, which also helps decrease the
percentage as it’s based on the proportion of original and unoriginal words in the paper.
In addition, you can use the info icon (an i) at the bottom left to check word count and other information
about the paper. Minimum word lengths of essays are reached with your original words. Quotations should
be in addition.