Turnitin can be used as a tool to improve your use of resources by informing you of the overuse of direct quotes, missing citations, and lack of originality. When you use direct quotes, which are flagged by Turnitin, you have the opportunity to paraphrase or summarize the material.  Paraphrasing and summarizing material improves the integration of material into your document and could lower your similarity index.  Lack of originality is another way to say trite or overused words or phrases.  Lack of originality could indicate the need to dig deeper in your resource material or it could indicate an overuse of the material.   Lastly, Turnitin uses colors to highlight material found in their database.  The highlighted material is linked to the source and you can use it as additional material. 

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