I got a call from my 14-year-old’s English teacher today. Their assignments had been flagged as probably plagiarized, which was surprising as I was there when my kid wrote them. An agonizing process of convincing them to pull words out of their brain and actually type them…
Turned out the system flagged one of my kid’s assignments — a piece of fiction about their cat flying to the moon — because they’ve turned it into another class previously. (Which was allowed.)
The other one? Literary analysis where they quoted Shakespeare and Poe as evidence.
The teacher seemed extremely relieved that she wasn’t dealing with an actual case of plagiarism, nor an angry, defensive parent.
As a writer, I definitely care about plagiarism. But as always when using an automated system, it’s important to double check whether it got it right.