How to Check for Plagiarism in Google Docs

There will always be those looking to find the quickest way to complete a job. If you take content from another source and pass it off as your own, there’s a word for it: plagiarism.

Plagiarism is a huge problem in academia and business, but that doesn’t mean you have to accept it. If you want to rule out the problem, you need to know how to check for plagiarism.

If you use a document editor, like Google Docs, you can, and there are a few tools you can use to get the job done. Here’s what you’ll need to do to check Google Docs for plagiarism.

Use a plagiarism add-on for Google Docs

A simple method to check plagiarism in Google Docs is to use an add-on. Add-ons allow you to add additional functionality to the editor, whether it’s creating diagrams or, in this case, verifying stolen content.

To use an anti-plagiarism add-on in Google Docs:

1. Open your Google Docs document.
2. Click on Add-ons in the toolbar and select Gett add-ons.
   
3. In the next menu, type plagiarism in the search bar and locate a suitable anti-plagiarism toolbar. Look for an add-on with the most users and the best quality rating, as well as the number of downloads. In this example we use Plagium.
4. Once you find an add-on, select it from the search results, then tap Install. In this example we use Plagiumbut you can consult the instructions for use of other anti-plagiarism tools.
5. Wait for the add-on to install. After a few moments, you should see it appear in the Add-ons.
6. To check for plagiarism, select a section of the text and press Add-ons > Plagium > Check section.
   
7. You will see sections of text that are plagiarized in the Plagium menu bar on the right, as well as a similarity percentage. The higher this value, the more plagiarized the text, based on the results of the tool.
   

Of course, depending on the document you have and the tool you use, your results will vary. Some similarity is expected due to common words, but anything over 10-15% is likely suspect.

Use grammar

One of the tools we use here at groovyPost is Grammarly. Not only will it check your document for spelling and grammatical errors, but you can also use it to quickly check for plagiarized content.

You will, however, need to make sure you have a Grammarly Premium subscription to do this.

To use Grammarly to check for plagiarism:

1. Open your Google Docs document.
2. In Google Docs, select File > Download and choose an appropriate format (usually DOCX).
   
3. Next, open Grammarly in your web browser and tap Upload.
   
4. If the document does not open automatically, tap the downloaded document in the list of grammar documents.
5. In addition to checking for spelling and grammatical errors, Grammarly checks the document for plagiarism, comparing the text to sources it identifies online.

Stop plagiarism in Google Docs

These are just two methods you can use to check Google Docs for plagiarism. Keep in mind that you might prefer a different add-on for Google Docs. Just go to Add-ons > Get add-ons and try an additional extension. Try different add-ons until you find the one that works best for you. You can also use websites like Copyscape to quickly compare two documents to see if there are any similarities.

If you’re an academic or professional and need to write an essay, learn how to set up MLA formatting in Google Docs or add and format a text box in Google Docs.