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Excluding text from the Similarity Report
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Exclude text directly from the paper text by selecting the highlighted text and then the Exclude text option that appears by the start of the passage.
- Instructions or template material - Has the similarity check picked up a template used by your institution? Or has the student inadvertently left in instructions at the beginning of the essay. Use this option to exclude this text. This will help Turnitin identify these sorts of matches in the future.
- Cited or quoted material - Has the student attempted to use quotes but the content has been picked by the similarity check? Perhaps they have used incorrect quotation marks? Use this option to exclude any content you feel should have been excluded due to citations or quotes. This is a good exercise to help teach students about correct citation style.
- Valid collaboration - If the similarity check has picked up valid collaboration between students or researchers, use this option to exclude this text.
- Common wording - Depending on the size of matches the Similarity Report has been set to ignore, the report could pick up short strings of words that are commonly used in academic writing. Exclude this text using this option.
- Other - If you would like to exclude text for a reason other than the available options, select ‘Other’ to open a text box. Here you will be able to enter your reason for the text exclusion. This information will help Turnitin improve our similarity matching in the future.
- Exclude without reason
- Alternatively, select a source to expand it and view the matching text side-by-side with the paper.
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Scroll to the bottom of the source text and select Exclude this Text.
- You will be presented with the same exclusions options as described above. Select a response to exclude the text.
- You're all done! The similarity score will be updated to reflect the exclusion you have just made.
This will open a menu that will allow you to select the reason for this text exclusion.
The options available are:
Your feedback will help us make similarity matches more accurate.
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