Turnitin is known for their plagiarism detection which is good in my opinion. They also have started doing AI detection but as I have mentioned in my other posts that AI detectors have a lot of false-positives. However, the real question is can Turnitin detect white text? The short answer is YES. It can easily detect white text. For the longer answer keep reading.
How easy is it to detect white text for Turnitin?
I would say it is extremely easy for Turnitin to detect white text and it is pretty damn reliable in my opinion.
See the thing is you need to look a bit deeper and understand why is it so easy for Turnitin to detect white text.
Turnitin is in the game for more than a decade and their systems have processed hundreds or even thousands of papers so they would have gotten by now how to detect white text.
They could simply extract text, get all the words and look for unusual number of spelling mistakes, or if someone has replaced all spaces with some other character then also the algorithm could flag the text as it is impossible for a text of 10000 characters to have no space, etc. There are many different aspects of text that they could analyze and change the text’s score depending upon how many such unusual instances could be found.
Now obviously when Turnitin would have started detecting such types of text they would have not been so good but overtime analyzing millions of papers overtime they would have found out more and more unusual patterns which would have further improved their algorithm.
So, I could conclude pretty confidently that Turnitin will be easily able to detect such kind of text.
What type of other such manipulations could Turnitin detect?
As far as their plagiarism detection algorithm goes, Turnitin could detect most, if not all manipulations to detect plagiarism. It includes white text, unusual text formatting, hidden text, use of homoglyphs, etc. Granted there are ways to bypass Turnitin’s plagiarism detection but we simply don’t recommend doing it as it can lead you to much deeper problems later down the road.
Ways to bypass Turnitin’s plagiarism/AI detection
Nowadays, you not only have to bypass Turnitin’s plagiarism detection you also need to get ahead of their AI detection algorithm:
1. Write Manually
I will get a lot of flak for this but this works. If you can muster courage to write the paper yourself then you will save yourself from a lot of headaches.
It is not fun when you prompt AI multiple times to get a decent paper, verify it has not hallucinated and then rewrite multiple sections or the whole of it just to bypass AI detection.
So, in many cases it is better to write it manually and call it a day. However, as we have discussed earlier that many times you will get flagged even if you have written the paper completely by yourself. This is when I suggest to look at the methods below.
2. Use a dedicated paraphraser
If you think you are going to get flagged or have been flagged in the past without any wrongdoings then you should consider using a dedicated paraphraser for this task.
There are many paraphrasers in the market but many of them are not purpose-built for this task. You need one that is made for this task like our tool which you could sign up using the register button at the top right.
3. Use good prompting techniques with the latest frontier models
With OpenAI releasing their thinking models like o1, o1-mini many AI companies like Google and DeepkSeek have released their thinking models as well.
What sets these thinking models apart from normal LLMs is that they use something called reasoning tokens to think aka self-prompt themselves and question their response multiple times just like humans do to get better responses.
I have used the thinking models and I must say that they are definitely an improvement over their predecessors. They provide more logically coherent outputs which will definitely help you in this task.
You can give them a few samples of your writing and tell them to emulate your writing style while generating responses. It will give you better results than using the older models.
4. Use homoglyphs
This is the most disingenuous ways to get around this problem. I say this because after using homoglyphs they are not English words anymore.
Homoglyphs are letters similar to English language letters but they will be interpreted differently by a computer. Hence Turnitin’s algorithm will get confused and hence will pass it as human written with zero plagiarism.
It also not foolproof since I think it is not that difficult to implement measures against this. Also, Turnitin has protection against these and will catch you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. Is written text detectable by Turnitin?
I think you are asking for “Is AI written text detectable by Turnitin?” The answer is yes, if you enable the option for AI check then it will check for AI written text.
Q2. Can Turnitin detect ghost writing?
No, Turnitin cannot detect ghost writing. However, your professor can look at the fact that the similarity score is abysmally low which may raise their suspicion.
Q3. How do I make sure my essay is not plagiarized?
To make sure that an essay is not a copy, one must take time to do detailed research work, attribute information correctly and plan well for writing. Whenever borrowed ideas are used, writers must acknowledge them through proper citations that follow the required referencing styles e. g., APA or Chicago so that there is no room for misunderstanding and everything is clear. Be that as it may, it is important to note that an effective paraphrase or summary can only be made if certain references are employed. Turnitin and Grammarly are some examples of instruments which serve for comparing texts with huge data sets and can help a writer with revising suspected passages. This will ensure that mistakes on who said what in the course of writing do not occur often. In the end, following ethical rules without failing at any point and making reasonable documentations from time to time mean that our work is academically upright while we maintain scholarly honor.
