| Misconception | Reality | |---------------|---------| | Turnitin detects plagiarism | It detects textual similarity . A human must judge intent and context. | | It stores your paper forever | Institutions control retention policies (often 1-7 years). You can request deletion in some cases. | | Paraphrasing always beats it | No – if paraphrasing is too close in structure or synonyms, Turnitin may still find matches. | | It checks images and PDF tables | Only text extracted from them. Scanned handwriting or image-only PDFs produce nothing. | | Turnitin is a spyware | It’s a voluntary educational tool. Papers are used only for integrity checking, not surveillance. | | AI detection is perfect | False positives and negatives occur. Turnitin says its AI detector is ~98% accurate but warns against sole reliance. |