How to Check Plagiarism Before Publishing — Writer's Guide

Step-by-Step Guide

1. 1

   Prepare your content

   Copy the final version of your article, blog post, or paper. Remove any properly cited quotes or attributed block quotes to avoid false matches.

2. 2

   Open the Plagiarism Checker

   Navigate to synthquery.com/plagiarism. Sign in for higher character limits and saved history.

3. 3

   Paste and scan

   Paste your content and click "Check Plagiarism." The tool compares your text against web pages, academic papers, and published content.

4. 4

   Review similarity results

   A similarity score under 10% is generally acceptable. Above 15% warrants investigation. The tool highlights matched passages and shows source URLs.

5. 5

   Examine matched sources

   Click on each highlighted match to see the source URL and the matching text. Determine if the match is coincidental phrasing or actual copied content.

6. 6

   Rewrite flagged passages

   For genuine matches, use the Paraphraser tool to rewrite flagged sections. Then re-scan to verify the similarity score dropped.

Pro Tips

• Scan every piece of content before publishing, even if you wrote it from scratch
• Common phrases and industry jargon may trigger false matches — focus on paragraph-level matches
• Run plagiarism checks on freelance submissions before accepting them
• Combine plagiarism checking with AI detection for complete content verification
• Export results as a PDF to document due diligence for your editorial records

Frequently Asked Questions