1. Description: Are you an author of a book, article, or any written online content? You may have run into plagiarism issues from other people stealing your working and want to know how to prevent this from happening. Often, I write articles on E-How and I go to extreme measures to prevent plagiarism. This includes rewriting my articles every month, changing titles, and checking for plagiarism.
2. Titles: When you create a certain blog, article, or story title - you need to make sure it has an original title. Meaning a title that no one else has. The first flag of plagiarism is the title and once you change the title, this will remove any suspicion of plagiarism. The best way to avoid plagiarism is by means of following your articles, etc. For example, if you own the rights to an article on E-how and you publish it on two other sites as well, you must be very careful. Make sure you make both titles different.
3. Body: It is always a good idea to rewrite your article or make a different version of it. I know it is a tedious task, however it is rewarding in the long run. The best way to detect plagiarism is by scanning the body for the same wording or phrases. It's better than having your account closed at E-How or getting flagged on Google as two submissions running through their system.
4. Avoiding plagiarism itself: We all know, that sooner or later your article will get flagged for plagiarism from someone who has stolen your work. E-how or Google will count it as two submissions if someone takes your work and posts it on your website. Make sure you always rewrite your oldest articles at least five times or more each month. This includes title and everything in body. That way on E-how they will skip paste your article so it isn't counted as a plagiarized article. Same with Google.
5. Use Copyscape: What Copyscape will do for you is scan your website location and see if there are other submissions online. They will basically check if someone has plagiarized your content and detect plagiarism that already exists. After they find content that is plagiarized, you should find out who the author is and take action. Do you research and send an e-mail with a copied attachment of your work to show you are the author and have rights to the original. Let them know you want them to take the article down. If they don't respond or reply within the next few days, send them another e-mail saying that you will take legal action. This will usually do the trick. If all else fails, re-write your article so you don't get penalized. Just be sure to keep the original copy on your disk, in case you need it in the future.