According to a survey conducted by EasyBib on their website, 81% of students say that they make the most errors in formatting citations. There are many regulations that they must follow in citations that include italics, punctuation, quotation marks, and so on. The rules are confusing, as they are very many.
Nothing can be frustrating in this world, like writing a research paper with all the effort and then lose marks because of wrong citations. Citations are essential as they uphold intellectual honesty and help to avoid plagiarism. The references show how the works done by others are related to the point you are discussing.
When writing a paper, the editor will specify the citation system that you should use. Many citation systems include the American Psychological Association (APA), American Sociological Association (ASA), MLA, and others. The use of correct citations makes your work authentic.
Another issue that significantly affects the authenticity of one’s work is plagiarism. According to the Oxford dictionary, plagiarism is taking someone else’s work and passing it on as your own. It is an infringement of copyright. It is intellectual theft, copying, and so on. Plagiarism is an unacceptable vice in the intellectual world.
Plagiarism can lead to expulsion from school, legal action, or monetary fines. The Department of Education in England resolved that any University student who submits a pre-written essay will get a fine and a criminal record.
Another serious issue with any writing is grammar. Grammatical errors put off the reader, however valuable the message is. Nobody wants to read a piece where they have to keep on thinking about what you wanted to say.
The internet is awash with citation generators, grammar checkers, and plagiarism checkers. All these claim to help get your citations right and check for any unintentional plagiarism. Even if you do not have any experience with citations and plagiarism checking, these tools guide you on how to go about it.
In this review, we want to look at one such citation generator and plagiarism checker. We want to have a critical look at the EasyBib website. Follow us through to find out what they do and how they can help you produce an authentic paper.
Name: EasyBib
Description: EasyBib is a literacy platform that offers you citations, plagiarism, and other research tools. Their tools are easy to use and educational. It helps teachers to teach and students to learn how to make and produce an authentic and organized research paper.
Plagiarism, incorrect citations, and grammatical errors can be disastrous in writing. They can turn a paper with enough research material into a poor article. You do not want your powerful message to get lost because of a punctuation mark that you forgot to put or wrong sentence structure.
EasyBib tool allows you to improve your writing by checking your writing style, punctuation, and structure of the sentences that you use. It also gives you unlimited checks to unintentional plagiarism so that the work you produce will be authentic. They also offer you multiple styles of citations so that you can choose the most appropriate for the work.
EasyBib has a free version and a monthly subscription version. The free version is limited in terms of what you can get. For example, in the free version, you will only get the MLA citation style.
You choose the monthly subscription version by clicking on “Start your free trial.” The free trial runs for three days, and if you do not cancel within three days, you will automatically be enrolled in the monthly subscription after the third day.
The company will charge you $9.95 each month until you cancel your subscription. The monthly subscription cost will start the day your subscription begins. For this, you will get an unlimited plagiarism checker and grammar checker. You will also have access to all citation styles, including APA.
To cancel your subscription, you can send an email to wtsupport@chegg.com or go to their support page.
What they offer
Let us get into details of what EasyBib offers you.
Citation styles
Citation is how you inform your readers that a particular piece in your work is not yours, but you got it from another source. It also gives your readers an easy time if they want to find the information and read more of it.
There are various citation styles. The information in the citation styles is the same, but they differ in its arrangement. The necessary information in a citation include:
- The title of the work
- Information about the author of the work
- The name and location of the publisher of the work
- The date that the work was published
- The page numbers of the material that you borrow
There are various reasons as to why you should cite. These include:
- Citations show that you have done enough research for your work
- Citations are useful to someone who wants to find out more about your work and where you got the ideas from.
- Giving citations strengthen your work by borrowing outside evidence to support your ideas.
- Citations increase the originality and authenticity of your work. It helps to separate your thoughts from those of others.
Note, when looking for an author, the author can be a person, multiple authors, or an organization.
When you subscribe to EasyBib, you will get guides to the following citation styles:
- MLA format
EasyBib offers you a full package when it comes to the MLA format. You will get a detailed guide with examples on how to cite your work using the MLA format.
- APA format
When you subscribe to the EasyBib site, you will get a comprehensive guide on how to cite your writing work using the APA format. EasyBib will provide you with instructions on how to cite, citation examples, and sample papers.
Among the things that you will find in the APA guide, including how to do in-text citations, full references, the format of an APA title page, and how to write a reference page in APA format.
An APA title page will have the following:
- The title of the paper
- Running head and page number
- The name of the author
- Name of the institution
- Chicago format
EasyBib is there for you if you want to cite your work using the Chicago style of formatting. You will get a detailed guide with several examples and visuals that will guide you on how to use the Chicago style of citation.
Innovative blog
If you are a teacher, student, or somebody interested in knowing how citations are done, EasyBib got you covered. The company runs a blog that features current and innovative tips on how to write and cite your work. You can learn as much as you want about citations through the informative articles in the blog.
Some of the articles that you can find on the blog include how to cite a NASA webpage, improvements on the APA citation, an infographic on MLA vs. APA citation styles, and much more.
Other tools and resources
With your monthly subscription to EasyBib, you will have access to a lot of resources and tools related to citations. You will have videos, infographics, research guides, and other resources.
Plagiarism checker
The EasyBib website also gives you the confidence to write. It allows you to avoid intellectual dishonesty that would otherwise affect the integrity of your paper. When you write a paper, your readers will be grading you depending on your skill of writing and the amount of research that you have carried out.
You, therefore, need to be ethical in your writing. If you use somebody else’s work in your writing as evidence, then you should cite it. If you do not mention it, then you will be committing intellectual dishonesty, and your work will be plagiarized.
Before submitting your work to a teacher, educator, or any other client, you should make sure it is plagiarism-free. There is no efficient and better way of doing this than by passing it through a plagiarism checker. This will help you by pointing out areas that you have other people’s work, but you did not cite.
EasyBib plagiarism checker helps you to check your work for plagiarism so that you can submit authentic work.
You can use the free plagiarism checker on EasyBib though this does not have a grammar checker. This could mean the difference between a high-quality piece of work and a low-quality one.
On the other hand, you can use the EasyBib Plus plagiarism checker, which will also help you check your spelling, sentence structure, and so on. The plagiarism checker is not only useful to a student. Educators also use it to check if the student’s work is original.
When you upload your paper onto the checker, it scans it and gives a percentage of how much of your work is not original. The EasyBib Plus is not only useful for the paper you are working in now, but it also helps you to gain knowledge that you can employ in your subsequent papers.
The essay checker searches online for sentences or phrases that may be similar to what you have in your paper. If it gives feedback on matching text, this means you have phrases without proper citations.
When you receive such feedback, you have a variety of options that you can take. First, you can decide to cite the areas that match. For this, you can use the EasyBib citation tool to help you with proper citation of the text.
Alternatively, you can decide to change the matching text and use different wording or use different evidence and facts. You can also decide that no citation is required, and you can dismiss the suggestion and go on to the next section.
Different types of plagiarism that EasyBib Plus detects
- Self-plagiarism: this occurs when a student submits the same paper more than once.
- Misleading citations: this is the kind of plagiarism where the writer provides a quote that does not align with the thought that the writer is talking about.
- Direct plagiarism: when a writer directly copies the work of another writer without acknowledging them through citations.
- Incremental plagiarism: this is copying some parts of another person’s work without giving them credit. These may include sentences and phrases from another person’s work.
- Patchwriting: this is sometimes confused with paraphrasing. Paraphrasing shows that you have read and understood the piece you are writing. Patchwriting simply means changing the words and using appropriate synonyms. You do not need to understand the source material in this.
Consequences of plagiarism
- You can face legal punishments for plagiarism
- You can receive monetary fines
- If you are a student, you may end up getting a zero in your assignment or even be expelled from school.
Grammar checker
EasyBib will also help you in checking your grammar. You may have a perfect topic of discussion, but the message can get lost in your grammar. If you are missing punctuation marks and using improper sentence structures, you may lose your reader. There are numerous logic reasons as to why you need to check your grammar. The following are some of the reasons:
- Clarity: using improper punctuation marks can make your message unclear. A comma can change the meaning of a sentence entirely.
e.g., The students who were late were punished.
The students, who were late, were punished.
Spelling mistakes such as using ‘there’ instead of ‘their’ could also change the meaning.
- Communication: written communication is a little bit more strict than the spoken one. In writing, we use punctuation marks to indicate a pause, emotions, questions, and so on. It is for that reason that you should pass your work through a grammar checker such as EasyBib so that you can make sure your work is communicating the intended message.
- Credibility: you need to prove that you can communicate using proper grammar. Making sure that your paper is on point grammatically gives you credibility and builds trust among your readers.
Title page maker
If you are a student, you may need to have a title page while submitting your paper. This may not be mandatory in all institutions or to all educators. However, in case you may need to have one EasyBibdoes that for you.
The tool can help you make a title page with your name, institution, topic, subtopic, running head, and so on.
A running head is usually a short version of the title that will appear at the top of all the pages.
Conclusion
Authenticity and credibility are essential aspects of any writing, whether academic or otherwise. Your work needs to be original. If you copy other people’s work without proper citations, then you will be committing intellectual dishonesty, which is unacceptable in writing.
At the same time, people want to read your work and easily understand it. Nobody wants to spend their time trying to figure out what you want to communicate. As such, proper usage of grammar is paramount. Using the correct sentence structures, spelling, punctuation, and so on is of importance.
EasyBib is an online tool that helps to check your grammar as well as plagiarism. After you are done writing your piece, you can run it through EasyBib, and the tool will detect improper citations and grammatical errors.
In terms of plagiarism, you can use the tool’s citation generator to help you cite the matching phrases correctly. This will make your work authentic.
EasyBib has a free version and a monthly subscription version. If you take the free version, you may miss out on some features. The monthly subscription version will work best for you and improve your work.
