6 Ways We Detect Plagiarism

Although many students get away with turning in an essay they didn't write, many more get caught. If you or a friend has ever been caught and wondered how, let me let you in on another awesome secret direct from the Professoriat. Or, rather, six.

All these things have happened to either me or a colleague in the past 2 years alone:

1. "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." --Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride (see, again, how attribution works? Also, the person who put that on YouTube stole it, but let's not split hairs). The absolute #1 way we can tell you plagiarized or paid someone else to write your paper is because your paper sounds too fancy. A colleague of mine got a paper once that was written in professional jargon, full of weird neologism (look it up, it's not dirty) that only a grad student or PhD would dare think acceptable to use. Sure enough, he plugged a sentence into Google and up it came.
2. Your paper isn't necessarily "too good," but it doesn't sound like you. Granted, this only applies in a discussion course where the professor has ever heard you speak, but chances are the instructor has at least one example of your actual language (in an exam, for example), and can tell immediately when the "voice" of your paper sounds off. Especially if you suddenly start sounding like a B-level, bored Ivy Leaguer.
3. Everything in your paper is technically "correct," but it's in a weird order, it doesn't make any sense, and it's clear that you have no idea what you are saying. Here's a hint: just because academic writing sounds like gibberish to you doesn't mean it's gibberish to us. We can actually recognize the difference between well-written but dense academicese (Judith Butler, I am talking to you!) and complete gobbeldygook.
4. You never show up to class, on the rare occasions when you do and are awake and called on, your responses are monosyllabic and clearly indicate that you have not even looked in the general direction of the reading--and yet you turn in a paper on time that is surprisingly well-written but just a liiiiiiiiiiitle bit off-topic or vague.
5. You quote the text--but your quotes do not have page numbers, you haven't included a bibliography or any sort, and you even have a few footnotes that either don't go anywhere or are astoundingly professional-sounding. 
6. This is the most pathetic one, but you would be amazed how often it happens: your paper suddenly switches fonts! Come ON, are you trying to get caught?

If you want to avoid these detection methods and still plagiarize, then be my guest--but just know that the time and effort it will take to avoid these will equal or surpass the time and effort it would take to just write it yourself. And that is where the Paper Intervention comes in. Smart me just realized the "paper intervention" is also some sort of evil weapon/technique, but that's kind of appropriate, isn't it? Stay tuned for more Interventions, more musings on why plagiarism never pays (unless you run a paper mill), and some sassy and helpful YouTubetastics (soon, I promise--have to get an outfit put together).