Free Online Plagiarism Checkers and Duplicate Content Detectors

I have rounded up the most powerful (free!) online plagiarism checkers to prevent you from duplicating or (accidentally) plagiarizing text. Of course, you can use these same plagiarism detectors to identify plagiarists who are stealing your content or republishing your articles without your permission. I have thoroughly tested each of these plagiarism checkers to make sure: 1) they actually catch plagiarized material; 2) they actually find duplicate content; 3) they analyze your entire text, including words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs; and 4) each one is fast, reliable and free to use.

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Guilty of Plagiarism? 5 Popular Plagiarism Scandals and Accusations

The old adage says, "There are no new ideas, only new ways of expressing them." What happens when a writer copies those expressions and passes them off as his or her own? Here are five well-known plagiarism scandals. What can you learn from each of them?

Stephen E. Ambrose (Jan. 1936 - Oct. 2002) was an American historian and biographer implicated of plagiarism, falsification, and incorrectness.

Stephen Ambrose

Ambrose was a highly respected history professor, war historian and biographer. He rose to fame with his book Band of Brothers, a book recounting WWII from the perspective of members of one infantry group. In 2002, he was accused of using passages from Wings of Morning by Thomas Childers in his book The Wild Blue. Although the initial discovery was made by Fred Barnes from The Weekly, Forbes magazine found more instances of plagiarism in six other books.

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