Q. Can I use Turn it In or another program before submitting a paper to check for plagiarism?

At Regent, our IT department recommends using Microsoft Editor, which has a Similarity checker, and you can download Microsoft Office free on the IT Supported Software page. I believe that Grammarly and other free programs can also check for plagiarism.

Sometimes, a professor will allow you to submit the paper to Canvas first to see the Turn it In report and then resubmit after making changes, or the professor may create a self-check assignment you can turn it in to (that isn't worth points). You can ask your professor about these options. The benefit of this would be that it would check the paper against other student papers that have been submitted. Microsoft Editor and Grammarly will check it against web sources.

If you don't use AI or copy words or ideas uncredited from any source, and you put all borrowed language in quotation marks with citations, making sure non-quoted wording is paraphrased totally in your own words and properly cited, you should be fine.

The writing center may also be able to help, and they have drop-in hours you can use to meet with them online.