GLARING errors normally betray students who have copied work from the internet, say university experts.

Amanda Layne, assistant registrar in charge of assessments at Salford University, is responsible for dealing with suspected coursework cheats.

Most are caught because of simple mistakes such as submitting essays with mismatched fonts that still include the website from where the words was copied.

The university is one of several across the country piloting "text matching" software to help lecturers spot work copied from the Internet. Students must submit an electronic version of their essay which is fed into a computer and compared with available documents on the Internet.

She said: "If it is the first case, students are often not aware that they have done something wrong and we emphasise that they need to properly reference material but in other cases the copying can be blatant and that is when we take action.

"Most of our staff use the Internet for checking if work has appeared elsewhere. Sometimes there are essays where the tense changes or it refers to "I" in one sentence and "We" in the next."

Academic bosses dealt with "a handful" of cases last year where students were suspected of buying essays from internet providers.

But the standards boss said the challenge was not just for students - but also for lecturers to set more varied work.

She said: "Some of the problems have been that essay questions have not changed for years and years and people are tempted to copy work done by previous students.

"This is an issue for all universities. We have got to think of ways of dealing with it not just catching students. We want them to do it right because we really do want to see their own work.