How to Safely Lower Your Thesis Turnitin Score

The most nerve-wracking moment besides the thesis defense is waiting for the Turnitin check results. You've been working for weeks, staying up late every night, and when the similarity score comes out, it hits 40%! Have mercy. :(

In this article, we will thoroughly discuss how to safely lower your thesis Turnitin score. You will learn legal paraphrasing techniques so your writing passes the plagiarism test without resorting to cheating methods that risk expulsion from campus.

TL;DR: Lowering the Turnitin score doesn't require cheating tricks (like spinners or white letters). The key lies in paraphrasing techniques: understand the original text then rewrite it without looking, change the structure from active to passive sentences, break compound sentences into short ones, and always cite the original source.

Because Turnitin's algorithm is already very sophisticated in detecting sentence structures and patterns (pattern matching), not just matching exact keywords. If you only change one synonym word (for example, "proves" to "shows"), the engine will still recognize the pattern block.

The biggest mistake students make is relying on automatic synonym finder sites (spinners). The result is that the sentences become weird, the language structure is chaotic, and it still gets blocked red by the system. You need a total sentence overhaul, not just pasting words.

This technique is done by reading the reference paragraph until you completely understand its essence, closing the journal tightly, and then rewriting the points you remember using your own words.

The steps are definitely easy: read 2-3 times until the original author's message gets into your brain. Focus on the meaning and ideas, not on the specific vocabulary they used.

Do not put the original journal next to your screen (or do split screen) when you are typing. If the journal is still visible, your subconscious will be tempted to copy word for word. With this closed-text method, it's guaranteed that your sentence output will be very different from the original, but the meaning remains just as strong.

Changing the structure from active to passive (or vice versa) will automatically overhaul the order of Subject, Predicate, and Object in a sentence, so Turnitin reads it as a completely new sentence.

For example, the original text says: "The researcher found that therapy method X successfully increased self-confidence."

You can reverse the sentence structure to: "The increase in self-confidence through the application of therapy method X has been successfully proven in this study."

Just by reversing the grammar arrangement, the plagiarism score will drop drastically!

Yes, highly recommended. The Turnitin detection engine easily catches similarities in strings of long and wordy compound sentences.

Some punctuation modification techniques you can try:

1. Breaking Sentences: Cut one compound sentence that has dependent clauses, change it into two independent short sentences separated by a period.
2. Combining Sentences: Conversely, if the original reference is in the form of short sentences (staccato), combine two sentences into one using conjunctions (although, because, so that).

Changing these period and comma (punctuation) patterns is proven to be very effective in deceiving the similarity sensor.

Absolutely mandatory! Even if you have successfully overhauled the sentence until it's 180 degrees different from the original, the ideas and findings still belong to the original author.

Many final-year students feel that if the text has been paraphrased, it has become their "own writing". Big mistake! Not citing the author's name and year (citation) on someone else's ideas will be counted as idea plagiarism, a very fatal academic ethics violation.