Many people think plagiarism is less of a concern in business writing than in academic or content writing but, that’s not true at all, plagiarism is a pushy concern for business writing just as it is for academic or creative writing.
Proofreading can help businesses in many ways. A good proofreader should review business documents with an eagle-eye view to ensure all the necessary factors.
Unfortunately, just as people don’t bother with other factors in business writing, they don’t know what proofreading is in the context of business writing and why is it important.
In this post, we will address proofreading in a business context and how to check for plagiarism in business writing as well.
So, give this post a complete read!
What is Proofreading in Business Writing?
Proofreading is a step of reviewing a business document for spelling, grammar, punctuation errors, and other minor things like formatting issues, and major things like plagiarism and inconsistency in the text.
The proofreading phase is the very last phase of the entire business writing process, it is normally done when the written business document is finalized and is ready to go to the clients or partners.
Before sending the business document, a proofreader keenly reviews the document just to ensure there aren’t any writing mistakes or plagiarism in the document.
To be clear, proofreading is not editing, many of us confused proofreading with editing though these two are totally different processes.
The editing process involves reviewing text for major changes like checking for incorrect information and fixing it, and checking for structure and language of the text whereas, the proofreading process involves minor things like typos, formatting, and plagiarism.
Also, proofreading comes at last when the business document is written and edited already.
What is Plagiarism in the Context of Business Writing?
Generally, we can define plagiarism as stealing others’ words and passing them as your own, however, in business writing we can demonstrate this in several ways.
Formal business writing that generally involves business plans and business reports, we can understand plagiarism as copying some ideas or points from your rival’s business plan and doesn’t even highlight it as plagiarized.
Though, in such documents plagiarism might not be a troublesome thing because a business plan and report are for inside persons.
But, if you create a business plan for your client such an issue is definitely troublesome because this will give your clients a hint that you are unprofessional which can further lead to many diverse consequences.
And if you are creating business content to use in marketing or other commercial purposes, plagiarism can not only offend your reputation as a brand but also diversely impact your SEO.
Therefore, it is very crucial to check every business document for plagiarism before sending it to clients or publishing anywhere.
Here’s how we can check plagiarism in business writing:
Ways: How to Check Plagiarism in Business Writing
To check for plagiarism in business writing, there are some of the methods and to do it right, we should know the proper ways that indicate plagiarism.
Below are a few ways to check for plagiarism in business writing while proofreading:
1. Look for inconsistent formatting
As a proofreader, you should have an eagle eye to see every little detail that can lead the business document to plagiarism.
You can start by focusing on the formatting of the written business plan or report, if there is any section in the document that is written in inconsistent formatting, this is a hint that it could be plagiarized.
Normally, when we copy some text directly from the internet we forget to correct the formatting according to the rest of the text, and the copied text is not consistent with the rest of the text.
This is how a good proofreader can detect plagiarism by looking for any inconsistent formatting in the document.
2. Look for style and tone shifts
Inconsistent formatting is one way to check for plagiarism but to ensure complete uniqueness in business writing, you should take a further step such as looking for shifts in tone and style of the business document.
Tone and style variations can clearly impact plagiarism in the text because a person writing the document is not likely to shift tones.
A change in the style of various text sections indicates multiple perspectives of writers and one person can never put multiple ways to how information is presented which means there could be plagiarism.
A good proofreader always checks for tone and writing style variations in the business document that could possibly lead to plagiarism.
3. Look for uncited statistics and figures
Statistics and figures are an important part of every business document whether it’s a business plan or a monthly closing report.
Normally, when writing a financial statement or a business plan for a client, we copy stats and figures from the internet, alter a little, and use them as they are just to save time, this is plagiarism if we don’t cite the source at the end.
As we previously discussed in the introduction, plagiarism in business writing might not look serious to some people as it is in academic writing but, for the sake of your professional image, it is important to avoid plagiarism.
A proofreader can look for any uncited figures or stats mentioned in the business document because they could be copied from any online source.
4. Use a plagiarism checker
Last but not least, if you don’t want to review each line or paragraph of the business document manually for plagiarism you can use a plagiarism checker.
Plagiarism checkers are AI-powered tools that are designed to detect the exact percentage of plagiarism in every document whether it is business-oriented or academic.
Plagiarism detectors can be a great help for proofreaders, these tools can save a lot of the time they spend reading each line, looking for inconsistent formatting, style, tone, and presenting them with the accurate percentage of plagiarism.
The tool automatically scans, analyzes, and compares each line of the business document with every source available online and if any line or section matches the online source the tool will highlight it as plagiarism.
Example:
This is how a plagiarism checker display results with 100% accuracy and all it takes for the tool is a few seconds to automatically check the text for plagiarism.
Conclusion
Proofreading is as important in business writing as it is in academic writing, proofreading business documents can help detect plagiarism and minor writing errors.
Plagiarism in business writing is very bad because it can influence a brand as unprofessional to its clients and partners therefore, proper proofreading must be included in your business writing process.
In the above sections, we discussed how you can carry out proofreading to check for plagiarism in your business writing.
Read and practice the above-mentioned ways to make your business documents sound professional and plagiarism-free.
