Excluding quotes and bibliographic material

Turnitin can automatically exclude content from within a Similarity Report, so that you can better tailor it to your assignment. We look for specific things within a paper to help us understand the start and end points of what we should exclude. Already know the paper uses the correct phrases? Learn how to exclude quotes and bibliography from within Turnitin Feedback Studio.

What is excluded?

For papers written in English

Bibliography exclusion

Turnitin's machine learning algorithm understands what elements of the paper to exclude from a submission and dynamically removes them from the Similarity Report. Users don't need to specify a specific bibliography section of their paper; we'll do that for you!

Beginning and terminating phrases are still used as a fall back in the rare event of our machine-learning algorithm is unavailable at the time of submission. You can resubmit your paper at a later date to take advantage of this advanced exclusion option.

Beginning phrases

  • work cited
  • works cited
  • citations
  • literature
  • literature cited
  • references and further reading
  • reference list
  • Resources Directory
  • additional reading
  • additional sources
  • annotated bibliography
  • article cited
  • bibliographic record
  • bibliographical references and notes
  • bibliography cited
  • citation
  • cited
  • cited articles
  • cited references
  • cited works
  • endnote
  • endnotes
  • footnote
  • footnotes
  • further information
  • further reading
  • key references
  • list of literature
  • list of references
  • literary sources
  • literature reviewed
  • literature used
  • literatures
  • literatures cited
  • previous work
  • previous works
  • published work
  • published works
  • reference notes
  • references and links
  • references index
  • references list
  • references section
  • referred articles
  • selected references
  • selected works
  • selective bibliography
  • sitography
  • source link
  • source list
  • sources
  • sources cited
  • used literature
  • used sources
  • works received
  • textbooks
  • reference
  • references
  • reference cited
  • references cited
  • reference and note
  • references and note
  • reference and notes
  • references and notes
  • reference & note
  • references & note
  • reference & notes
  • references & notes
  • resource
  • resources
  • bibliography

Terminating phrases

When the document reaches any of the following words in the paper, it will resume the similarity check:

  • appendix
  • appendices
  • glossary
  • table
  • tables
  • acknowledgment
  • acknowledgments
  • acknowledgement
  • exhibits
  • acknowledgements
  • figure
  • figures
  • chart
  • charts

Quotes

Supported marks

Turnitin will disregard any matches that use the following quotation marks (as well as quotations within a quotation):

"..."

'...' «...» »...« „…“ 《...》 〈...〉 『...』

If single quotes have not been excluded in a submission, it is possible that the word processor used to create the file has labeled the quotes as an apostrophe and will need to be manually excluded. This should not happen with Google, Microsoft, or Apple word processors.

Block quotations

Turnitin will exclude block quotation (an indented block of text) when the original file is a .doc or .docx file.

How to exclude quotes and bibliographic material from the Similarity Report

  1. To exclude different types of text from the similarity report, select 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 pane, use the check boxes to make bibliography and quote exclusions from the similarity report.

  3. Select the Apply Changes button to confirm this change. This will renew the similarity report with your change now reflected in the assignment.