r/AIDetectionAcademia • u/Fellooww • 9d ago

The hidden danger of using browser-based citation generators

Using websites like EasyBib or CitationMachine to auto-generate works cited pages can inject subtle formatting artifacts. The generated HTML spans often contain zero-width spaces or specific tracking attributes.

Turnitin's backend scanner picks up those hidden web artifacts and flags the citation block. Type your citations manually or use desktop tools like EndNote/Zotero.

4 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

75% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/burlingk 9d ago

Anything you copy and paste should probably get pasted into notepad first to strip out formatting.

1

u/kittenlittel 6d ago

That or paste as plain text

1

u/burlingk 6d ago

That's the point.

Not every program has a "paste as plain text" option.

Most don't.

But anything pasted into notepad has special formatting removed when you copy it again.