"...We are an educational establishment (university, college, school) and need to check (or suspect or believe) whether the work someone has submitted has been plagiarized from some other work - What do we do?..."

If as a teacher, parent or administrator you suspect a student of plagiarism you can do the following:

• Consult an online plagiarism service to have them trace the source text. Note, however that this has some limitations and can on occasion be spectacularly wrong.
• Consult us here at www.plagiarism.org.uk. Provide us with a copy of the suspect text. Depending on the situation we will do one of the following:
• Attempt to find the online source
• Attempt to find the offline source
• Measure the text for internal stylistic differences

Note that it is not necessary to trace the source text in order to prove a charge of plagiarism. If it is evident that a student's style has changed from previous texts, or within one text, and there is no satisfactory explanation for this change, then plagiarism, or some allied form of academic dishonesty can be demonstrated. All that needs to be done is for the suspect text to be measured, in a very particular forensic way. As we are forensic linguists, that is one of the things that we do.

If you wish to consult us, or require further information, you may contact us in complete confidence. If we have been previously instructed for the other party and we are unable to act as your plagiarism advisers we will inform you immediately. However, your information will remain completely confidential.