Writing in Turnitin Clarity

This guide for students explains how to title your submission, use the writing space, and format your work in the Student Writing assignment in Turnitin Clarity.

In this guide:

• Titling your submission
• Saving and editing your work
• Reviewing assignment instructions in the writing space
• Using the editor

Titling your submission

1. Select the pencil icon in the header at the top of the screen.
2. Enter a title.
3. Select anywhere on the page to save the change or press Enter on the keyboard.

Saving and editing your work

Your progress will be automatically saved as you write and make changes to the document. You’ll see a “Saving…” or “Saved” indicator along with the Last Saved date and time stamp at the top-left of the editor.

 For more information on submitting your work, view Submitting a Clarity assignment.

Offline status

The writing space could experience technical issues and be offline temporarily. If this happens, you’ll see a notification that the editor is in offline mode. 

When the editor is offline, you cannot edit, save, or submit any changes to the document. 

Reviewing assignment instructions in the writing space

1. To review or reference the assignment instructions and due date, select the Instructions tab in the side panel. 
    

Using the editor

The editor toolbar, located at the top of your document, contains essential editing and formatting features for your writing assignment.

Document features

• Retains formatting for pasted text
• Retains table formatting (for pasted table input)
• Supports the “tab” key  to indent new paragraphs
• Provides word or character count

Spelling and grammar assistance

The grammar check button is the first icon in the toolbar. The spelling and grammar assistance are available based on your instructor's settings for the assignment.

Spelling and grammar check

From the drop-down menu, you can run a grammar check or toggle spelling and grammar suggestions on or off.

• Spelling check (automatically enabled)
  • Suggestions appear in real time as you write.
  • Suggestions display directly in the document with a red squiggle underline.

• Grammar suggestions appear only when the instructor enables them in the assignment settings.
  • Suggestions appear only after you select the Grammar check button from the drop-down menu and ensure the Show grammar suggestions box is selected.
  • Once selected, the document will temporarily lock, and a “Reviewing your document” modal will appear.
  • Once the review is complete, grammar suggestions display directly in the document with a dark blue underline.
  • Actioning suggestions:
    • To approve the suggestion, select the green checkmark button. Approving a suggestion replaces your underlined content with the suggestion in the modal.
    • To dismiss the suggestion, select the white circle-with-a-slash button.
    • Dismissing a suggestion does not apply any changes to the content in your draft.

Spelling and grammar suggestions are LLM-generated, which means the suggestions could vary in their output between checks.

Citation assistance

The citation check button is the second icon in the toolbar. The check reviews in-text and reference citations for proper formatting based on the style guide chosen when your instructor created the assignment.

From the drop-down menu, you can run a citation check and toggle the citation suggestions on or off.

• Citation check (must be enabled by your instructor)
  • Suggestions appear only after you select the Citation check button from the drop-down menu.
    
  • Once selected, the document will temporarily lock, and a “Reviewing your document” modal will appear. 
    
  • Once the review is complete, a green success message will appear, and citation suggestions will display directly in the document with a dark blue underline.
  • Select the dark blue underlined content on your draft to see the suggestion.
    
  • Actioning suggestions:
    • To approve the suggestion, select the green checkmark button. Approving a suggestion replaces your underlined content with the suggestion in the modal.
    • To dismiss the suggestion, select the white circle-with-a-slash button.
      • Dismissing a suggestion does not apply any changes to the content in your draft.
    • To close the suggestion modal, select the X button in the upper-right corner of the modal.

Citation suggestions are LLM-generated, so the output may vary between checks.

• If you find the suggestions distracting while writing or reviewing, you can hide the citation suggestions on your document as needed.
  

If an error occurs while running the citation check, you may see this message: “There was an issue with citation check. Please try again.”

You can refresh the page and repeat the process by selecting the Citation check button again.

Footnotes

You can use footnotes to add supporting information without interrupting the flow of your writing.

1. Place your cursor where you want to add a footnote.
   
2. In the writing space toolbar, select the More options button.
   
3. Select the Insert footnote (asterisk) icon.
    
4. A dark green superscript number appears where your cursor was, and a footnote text area opens at the bottom of your screen. 
   
5. Begin typing your footnote text in the footnote text area.
   
6. To exit the footnote area, select anywhere on the screen. The footnote superscript changes to light green. 
   
7. Add additional footnotes using the same process. If you insert a new footnote between existing ones, numbering updates automatically.
   
8. To see all footnotes, scroll to the end of your document.
9. To edit a footnote, select the footnote superscript in your document or double-select the footnote text area to open and edit it.
10. To delete a footnote, select the footnote superscript in your document and press Backspace. Deleting a footnote from the main text also removes its content from the footnote text area.

11. Footnotes support the same formatting tools available in the editor.
    
12. You can download your document to preview how footnotes will appear in your final submission. 

Headers, footers, and page numbers

Use headers, footers, and page numbers to meet formatting requirements.

1. In the writing space toolbar, select the Insert headers and footers icon under the More options menu. 

2. In the Insert header and footer modal, select Header or Footer at the top of the modal. 
   
    
   
    
3. In the Header text box or the Footer text box, enter what you want to appear in the header and footer of your submission, respectively.
4. If you want to add page numbers to your submission, select the Include page numbers checkbox. You can include page numbers in the header, the footer, or both. The page number will appear to the right of the header or footer text.
5. Select Apply.

To update or remove headers, footers, and page numbers, reopen the Insert header and footer modal from the formatting toolbar, make your changes, and then select Apply again.

Essential editing tools

• Copy, Cut, and Paste
• Undo and Redo (useful for quickly correcting mistakes)

Formatting text

Apply basic formatting to your document text.

• Heading styles
• Font type
• Font size
• Bold
• Italics
• Underline
• Strikethrough

Text and highlight colors

Apply color to both text and highlights in your document.

• Text color
• Highlight

The editor features described below are available in the More options menu in the toolbar.

Aligning and organizing content 

• Text alignment: left, right, center
• Hanging indent: for citations or definitions
• Paragraph spacing

Working with lists and structuring content

For checklists or outlining content, you can use:

• Bullet points
• Numbered lists

Inserting elements

• Images: you can ​​upload, copy/paste, or drag and drop images directly into the editor.
  • Graphics, such as pie charts, cannot be created directly in the editor, but you can upload pre-made visuals.
• Tables
• Block Quotes: useful for citing references or highlighting important text
• Subscript and Superscript  

Submission toolbar menu

Download

In the writing space, you can generate and download a PDF containing exactly what is shown in the editor. 

1. Go to the submission toolbar header. 
2. Select Menu. 
3. Select the Download option. 
   
   1. One of three toast messages could appear:
      1. The document is downloading.
         
      2. The document downloaded correctly and should appear in their browser’s download folder as a PDF.
         
      3. The download failed. Try again.
         
4. Save or open the PDF through your browser’s download options. After downloading, print the file directly from your browser.

Help resources

In the top-right corner of the page, you can find additional help and resources.

• View help guides: visit Turnitin's student hub on the left and view the full student guides.
• Keyboard shortcuts: Keyboard shortcuts help you work faster by using key combinations for navigating, editing, or formatting your writing. For a comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts, view: Using keyboard shortcuts with Clarity assignments.

Learn more

• Using keyboard shortcuts with Clarity assignments
• Submitting a Clarity assignment