Q: How do I prevent a direct quote from being marked as plagiarized in a plagiarism checker?
Whenever I use a plagiarism checker (any of them), my direct quotation is still marked as plagiat [plagiarized], even though I use quotation marks (“ ”) and also write “stated.” How do I avoid this?
Plagiarism checking tools are, by default, configured to identify direct quotes as plagiarized. If you wish to avoid this being checked, you can turn it off in the settings. This is typically in the advanced settings, though it may vary by tool. If you are not able to find it for a certain tool, you could try looking up its help section. You can turn off the check either before submitting the document to the tool or after the report is displayed. However, it may be better to keep it turned on so that you get a chance to review each quote – to see whether or not it is indeed verbatim or whether you inadvertently made a slight change to it.
In a related vein, if the check is throwing up many results for direct quotes, it may not be a good sign. You should not have too many direct quotes in a paper, unless where absolutely unavoidable. A research paper, after all, is meant to showcase original thinking and writing. In such cases, you could try rephrasing (paraphrasing) some if not all of the quotes.
Related reading:
This content belongs to the Manuscript Writing Stage