A Red Flag will indicate a type of character manipulation in a paper, replacement of characters, and hidden text.

1. Turnitin will identify a paper with manipulated characters with Red Flag in the Assignment Inbox. Click on the flag icon to see more information.
   
   
   
   
2. The first box (2 flags) will indicate the types of Red Flags that the system has identified. The second box (99) indicates how many violations in the paper.
   
   Click on the first box (2 flags).
   
   
   
   
3. This box indicates how many flags to review. In the example below, Turnitin discovered hidden text and replacement characters. Click on the Hidden Text section.
   
   
   
   
   
4. A student may make the text white so the characters don't actually show in the paper. This will fool the word count into thinking there are more words. To avoid this, encourage the student to write meaningful content rather than length (number or word or paragraph requirement).
   
   
   
   
5. Next, click on the Replaced Characters section.
   
   
   
   
6. Students may try to beat the similarity checker by replacing a letter with a symbol or letter from another alphabet. In the example below ¹, replacing the letter "a" with the Cyrillic "a" is not easily distinguished by the eye when reading. This is intended to trick the similarity checker into not matching the plagiarized text.
   
   
   
   
   However, Turnitin now can identify foreign character and will highlight and Red Flag the paper.
   
   
   
   
   
7. For more information about Red Flags, see the Turnitin article "Flags Insight Panel for Focused Information." 
   
   
   
   1. Example text above from "The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway": https://www.gutenberg.org/files/67138/67138-h/67138-h.htm