How To Check For Plagiarism in Grammarly & Is It Any Good?

Faculty of Apps
18 Oct 202004:37

TLDRThe video demonstrates how to use Grammarly's plagiarism tool, available to premium subscribers, and compares its effectiveness with a free online tool, QTex.com. The host creates four documents: an original piece, a famous excerpt from Charles Dickens' 'A Tale of Two Cities', a movie review from The New York Times, and a paragraph from a high school biology textbook. Grammarly incorrectly identifies the original work as plagiarized and fails to detect the Dickens excerpt as copied, while correctly identifying the movie review and biology textbook text. QTex.com performs similarly but identifies sources from different websites. The video concludes that there is little difference between Grammarly's premium plagiarism feature and free online tools, offering viewers a useful guide on how to check for plagiarism.

Takeaways

  • 🔍 The video demonstrates how to use Grammarly's plagiarism checker and compares it with a free online tool, QTex.com.
  • 💰 Grammarly's plagiarism tool is only available to premium subscribers.
  • 📄 The test includes four documents: one original, and three taken from the internet with various types of texts.
  • 🚫 Grammarly incorrectly identifies the first seven words of the user's original work as similar to a website, showing overzealousness.
  • ✅ QTex returns a nil result for the user's original work, indicating no plagiarism.
  • 📚 For the famous opening lines of 'A Tale of Two Cities', Grammarly fails to find matching text, while QTex identifies some from a different source.
  • 🎬 Grammarly successfully identifies the plagiarized text from a New York Times movie review, as does QTex, but from an archived version.
  • 📖 In the case of the high school biology textbook, Grammarly and QTex both recognize the text as plagiarized from different websites than the source.
  • 🤔 The results show that there isn't much difference between Grammarly's premium feature and free checking tools available online.
  • 📢 The video aims to help viewers understand how to check for plagiarism and suggests considering free alternatives.
  • 🔗 For more tips, the viewer is directed to subscribe to the channel and visit the blog facultyofapps.com.

Q & A

  • What is the main topic of the video?

    -The main topic of the video is how to use Grammarly's plagiarism checker and a comparison of its effectiveness with a free online plagiarism tool, QTex.

  • What are the four documents the presenter created for the demonstration?

    -The presenter created one original piece of writing, a famous introductory paragraph from Charles Dickens' novel 'A Tale of Two Cities', a movie review from The New York Times, and a paragraph from a high school biology textbook called 'Concepts of Biology'.

  • How did Grammarly's plagiarism checker perform on the presenter's original writing?

    -Grammarly's plagiarism checker identified the first seven words as similar to content found on JustAnswer.com, which was considered an overzealous result since the writing was original.

  • What was the result of using Grammarly's plagiarism checker on the text from 'A Tale of Two Cities'?

    -Grammarly's plagiarism checker failed to find any matching text on the internet, incorrectly indicating that the writing was 100% original.

  • How did QTex perform in comparison to Grammarly for the text from 'A Tale of Two Cities'?

    -QTex identified some of the text from a different website than the one used by the presenter, showing a better but still imperfect result.

  • What was the outcome when the New York Times movie review was checked for plagiarism using Grammarly?

    -Grammarly successfully identified the text as coming from the newspaper article.

  • How did QTex's results differ from Grammarly's for the New York Times movie review?

    -QTex also recognized the text but from an archived version of the original New York Times article on archive.org.

  • What was the result for the paragraph from 'Concepts of Biology' using Grammarly's plagiarism checker?

    -Grammarly recognized the text from a website, though not the exact source site, indicating the content was not original.

  • How did QTex perform in comparison to Grammarly for the 'Concepts of Biology' paragraph?

    -QTex identified the paragraph from a different website and revealed that the content was available under a Creative Commons license on an educational site.

  • What is the conclusion the presenter draws about the effectiveness of Grammarly's premium feature versus free checking tools?

    -The presenter concludes that there isn't much difference between Grammarly's premium feature and the free checking tools available on the internet.

Outlines

00:00

📝 Comparing Grammarly's Plagiarism Tool to a Free Online Tool

The video introduces a comparison between Grammarly's premium plagiarism tool and a free online plagiarism checker, QTeX.com. The presenter has created four documents: one original piece and three taken from various online sources, including a famous passage from Charles Dickens' novel, a movie review from The New York Times, and a paragraph from a high school biology textbook. The goal is to evaluate how effectively each tool identifies plagiarism.

🔍 Testing Original Work with Grammarly and QTeX

The presenter begins by testing their own writing with Grammarly's plagiarism checker. Surprisingly, Grammarly identifies a similarity with a text on JustAnswer.com, which the presenter considers an overzealous result. QTeX, on the other hand, returns no results, indicating the text is original, which aligns with the presenter's expectation.

📚 Dickens' Opening Lines: A Tale of Two Cities

Next, the presenter tests the famous opening lines from 'A Tale of Two Cities'. Grammarly incorrectly identifies the text as 100% original, while QTeX correctly identifies the text but from a different source than the one used by the presenter. This suggests that QTeX's tool is more accurate in this case.

🎬 New York Times Movie Review: Plagiarism Check

The presenter then tests a movie review from The New York Times. Grammarly quickly identifies the text as originating from the newspaper, while QTeX also recognizes the text but from an archived version on archive.org. Both tools correctly identify the text as not original, but neither matches the exact source used by the presenter.

📚 Biology Textbook Plagiarism Test

The final test involves a paragraph from a biology textbook, 'Concepts of Biology'. Grammarly successfully identifies the text but from a different website than where the text was sourced. QTeX also identifies the paragraph but from yet another different website. The presenter notes that one of the identified sources is an educational site offering the book under a Creative Commons license.

📈 Conclusion: Grammarly vs. Free Online Tools

The video concludes with the presenter summarizing the findings. They note that there isn't a significant difference between the premium feature of Grammarly and the free online tools available. The presenter encourages viewers to subscribe for more tips and to visit their blog for additional information.

Mindmap

Keywords

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the act of using someone else's work or ideas without giving proper credit to the original source. It is considered unethical and can have serious academic or legal consequences. In the video, the creator discusses how to use Grammarly's plagiarism tool to detect instances of plagiarism in documents, which is central to the video's theme of ensuring originality and proper attribution in writing.

Grammarly

Grammarly is an online writing assistant tool that checks for grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. It also offers a premium feature that includes a plagiarism checker. The video focuses on demonstrating the effectiveness of Grammarly's plagiarism tool by comparing it with a free online tool, which is relevant to the viewers who may be considering whether to subscribe to Grammarly's premium service.

Premium Subscribers

Premium subscribers are users who have paid for an upgraded version of a service, in this case, Grammarly. The video mentions that the plagiarism tool is only available to premium subscribers, highlighting the additional benefits that come with a paid subscription, and this is a key point in the discussion about the value of Grammarly's premium features.

Free Online Plagiarism Tool

A free online plagiarism tool is a service available on the internet that allows users to check for plagiarism without cost. In the video, the creator compares the results from Grammarly's premium plagiarism tool with those from a free tool called QTeX.com. This comparison is significant as it helps viewers understand the potential differences in effectiveness between free and paid plagiarism detection services.

QTeX.com

QTeX.com is mentioned in the video as a free online tool for checking plagiarism. It serves as a point of comparison to evaluate the performance of Grammarly's plagiarism checker. The video shows that while both tools can identify plagiarized content, there are differences in how they source and identify matches, which is crucial information for users deciding which tool to use.

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens is a renowned English writer, known for his novels such as 'A Tale of Two Cities.' In the video, a famous introductory paragraph from Dickens's novel is used as an example to test the plagiarism tools. The incorrect identification of this text by Grammarly and the correct identification by QTeX.com illustrate the varying performance of the tools in identifying well-known literary works.

A Tale of Two Cities

This is a famous historical novel written by Charles Dickens. A paragraph from this novel is used in the video as a test case for the plagiarism checkers. The novel's text serves as a benchmark to evaluate how accurately the plagiarism detection tools can identify and source original content from classic literature.

Movie Review

A movie review is a critique or evaluation of a film, often written by a professional critic. In the video, a movie review from the New York Times is used as another example to test the plagiarism tools. The review's identification by both tools demonstrates their ability to recognize content from reputable journalistic sources.

High School Biology Textbook

The video includes a paragraph from a high school biology textbook called 'Concepts of Biology' to test the plagiarism detection capabilities of the tools. The textbook paragraph represents academic content, which is a common type of material where plagiarism checks are essential to ensure original research and writing.

Creative Commons License

A Creative Commons license is a type of public copyright license that allows creators to communicate which rights they reserve and which they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators. In the video, the license is mentioned in the context of an educational site making the biology textbook available, which is an example of how content can be legally shared and used under specific conditions.

Originality

Originality refers to the state of being unique or new, not copied or derived from other sources. It is a fundamental aspect of academic and creative writing. The video's main theme revolves around checking for originality in writing through the use of plagiarism detection tools, emphasizing the importance of producing unique content.

Highlights

The video demonstrates how to use Grammarly's plagiarism tool.

Grammarly's plagiarism checker is available only to premium subscribers.

The video compares Grammarly's tool with a free online plagiarism tool, QTex.

The first document is an original piece of writing by the creator.

The other three documents are sourced from the internet, with varied types of texts.

One document is an excerpt from Charles Dickens' 'A Tale of Two Cities'.

Another document is a movie review from The New York Times.

The third document is from a high school biology textbook 'Concepts of Biology'.

Grammarly incorrectly identifies the creator's original writing as plagiarized.

QTex does not find any plagiarism in the creator's original writing.

Grammarly fails to find a match for the famous opening lines of 'A Tale of Two Cities'.

QTex identifies a match for the 'A Tale of Two Cities' excerpt, but from a different source.

Grammarly successfully identifies the New York Times movie review as plagiarized.

QTex also identifies the movie review as plagiarized, but from an archived version of the article.

Grammarly recognizes the biology textbook text as plagiarized from a different website than the source.

QTex identifies the biology textbook text from an educational site with a Creative Commons license.

The video concludes that there's not much difference between Grammarly's premium feature and free checking tools.

The video encourages viewers to subscribe to the channel for more tips and resources.