A plagiarism checker has a number of applications that honest writers should never need to use. However, because of the epidemic rate of plagiarism and copyright infringement cases worldwide, many people are taking unnecessary steps to protect themselves - even if the work they have created is their own. In many cases a plagiarism checker is counterproductive because it requires time and resources to use properly and take appropriate action when needed. Therefore, there is only one group of people who should be using a plagiarism checker: people who are checking to see if work that has been submitted to them by another is plagiarized.

Plagiarism checker software or applications are generally used by students to check their own work before submitting to their teachers. Plagiarism is a valid fear for students because if caught offenders could be expelled from their educational institution and possibly barred from seeking employment in their field of choice. Students often use multiple sources to write their papers and the line between plagiarism and original work can sometimes be blurred. For their own protection, students will run their work through a plagiarism checker. Herein lays the problem: if you are unsure enough about the originality of your own work that you need to use a plagiarism checker, then there likely is a problem with it.

In most cases a teacher is going to run student work through a software program like Copyscape to check for plagiarism. Because of the easy availability of documents across the web, many students have taken to cheating in order to pass their classes. Plagiarism tools are excellent at picking up on these instances and offending students face severe consequences.

However, professional and amateur writers also use these services to check the work they submit to clients or publish for their own uses. But here again, anyone uncertain enough about their own work to require a check for copyright infringement is probably dangerously close to violating a copyright in some way. A large deal of this problem is attributed to the fact that many writers simply pull from material already on the web and then attempt to put that material "in their own words."

The only way students and other writers can mitigate their own work is to carefully separate their writing from the works they use to create it. Here's an effective method for doing so:

*Use at least 4-5 sources of information

*Pull the important pieces of information from each source and write them down in your own words in a bullet-point outline

*Writing from the completed outline, rework the information yet again using your own, unique and expanded writing

*Quote your sources appropriately

By doing this, your writing is at least two original steps removed from the source. (A thesaurus is essential to do this correctly.) Unless you fully quote your original sources, your work must be nothing less than 100% original as anything less than this leaves you open to attack.

For writers and that create work the right way, there should never be a need for a plagiarism detection tool. This means that the only need for this type of software is by people who have writing submitted to them. This includes teachers that must check their students work and buyers or others that must verify the originality of work submitted to them.

Ultimately, if you're a writer who needs to verify their own work using a plagiarism checker, you may need to reappraise your writing and research techniques.