Excluding small matches

Excluding small matches allows you to exclude matching against submissions with a small amount in common with the student's paper. For example, it's possible to exclude sources of less than 20 matching words in total, or less than 10% in total matching.

The percentage is based on the total word count of the student's submission. For example, if a student submitted a 5,000 word paper and you have this set to 10%, it will exclude sources of less than a 500 word match.

If you exclude small matches at the assignment level, you can change it at the individual submission level.

  1. To exclude text from the similarity report according to its size, click the red filter icon from the similarity toolbar. If the similarity layer was inactive, it will now be activated, highlighting all on-paper matches.

  2. From the Filters and Settings side panel, use the radio and text boxes to determine which exclusions should apply to the paper's similarity report. You can exclude sources that are less than a certain number of words, or a certain percentage of words. For example, filtering by 10 words will exclude all sources that have a cumulative number of matching words that are less than 10 words in length.
  3. Click Apply Changes to confirm this change. This will regenerate the similarity report with your change now reflected in the assignment.