--- title: 'Seeing which answers were pasted in' description: 'See whether a written answer was typed or pasted, and highlight exactly which words were pasted in.' canonical: 'https://www.gonurture.com/tutorials/signal/results-insights/seeing-which-answers-were-pasted-in' siteGuide: 'https://www.gonurture.com/llms.txt' --- ![Seeing which answers were pasted in](https://www.gonurture.com/og/tutorials/seeing-which-answers-were-pasted-in.png) Teacher See whether a written answer was typed or pasted, and highlight exactly which words were pasted in. Updated 25 October 2026 Signal shows you whether a written answer was typed or pasted. If a student pastes text into their answer and it’s still there when they submit, the response is flagged, and you can highlight exactly which words were pasted. **When to use it:** You’re reading through explanations or written answers and want to know which ones a student wrote themselves, or an answer doesn’t sound like the student and you want to see which parts came from elsewhere before you talk to them. It covers the reason a student gives with a quiz or poll answer, open answers, and in an Assessment, their confidence comment and reflection. Only teachers see it. Students and parents don’t, and it never appears on presenter view. ## On a response: Pasted in A response with pasted text in it shows **Pasted in**, in blue, in the line under the answer, beside timings such as **Typed for**. 1. Find the response in the question’s results, or open it. 2. Hover over **Pasted in**. The pasted words light up in blue inside the answer. 3. To keep them highlighted, select **Pasted in**. Select it again to turn the highlight off. The highlight is off the rest of the time, so answers stay easy to read. ## On confidence comments and reflections: Pasted In an Assessment, a student’s confidence comment or reflection with pasted text in it shows **Pasted**. - Hover over it to highlight the pasted words. - Select it to open **Pasted text**, which lists each stretch of text that was pasted. ## How it’s detected - **It’s reported by the student’s browser.** When a student pastes into an answer box, their browser notes the text that was pasted and sends that along with the answer. - **Only text that’s still there counts.** If a student pastes something and then deletes it, the answer isn’t flagged. If they paste a paragraph and then edit it, the parts that survive are the parts highlighted. - **Repeated words may not be highlighted.** If the pasted words also appear elsewhere in the answer, Signal can’t tell which copy was pasted, so it doesn’t highlight them. The flag still shows. Whether a written answer was typed or pasted is one of two behavioural signals Signal records, alongside leaving the session view. ## In the results charts ### Explanations Quiz and poll questions where students gave a reason have an **Explanations** card. It counts the explanations under: - **Potential guess:** only on questions with a correct answer. - **Low effort** - **Pasted in:** the explanation was pasted in rather than typed. - **Own reasoning:** typed, with none of the other signals. One explanation can appear under more than one of these. A pasted explanation can also be a potential guess, for example. These counts are Premium. On the Standard plan every count on the card, **Pasted in** included, shows **?**, with a Premium crown. That’s deliberate: a real pasted count next to unchecked guess counts would suggest the rest had been checked and found clean. The **Pasted in** flag on each response still shows on every plan. ### Written answers Open answer questions have a **Written answers** card instead, counting answers that were **Pasted in** and answers students **Typed themselves**, with the median time spent typing. This card is on every plan. ## What it doesn’t tell you - **It’s not a verdict.** A pasted answer isn’t marked wrong or treated as a guess, and it doesn’t change a student’s score, the accuracy figure or the recommendation. It’s a signal to look at the response. - **It doesn’t say where the text came from.** Text pasted from the student’s own notes looks the same as text from a website, a classmate or an AI tool. - **It only knows about pasting.** Text a student types out, whatever they copied it from, counts as typed. **Tip:** Treat a flag as the start of a conversation. A student may have drafted their answer somewhere else and pasted it in. [Previous Seeing every answer at once: the right and wrong grid](https://www.gonurture.com/tutorials/signal/results-insights/seeing-every-answer-at-once-the-right-and-wrong-grid.md) [Next Export a student's insights as a PDF](https://www.gonurture.com/tutorials/signal/results-insights/export-participant-insights-as-pdf.md) About this feature - [Behind every answer](https://www.gonurture.com/signal/behind-every-answer.md) Related articles - [Why does a correct guessed answer count as half?](https://www.gonurture.com/tutorials/signal/troubleshooting/why-does-a-correct-guessed-answer-count-as-half.md) - [Why are low-effort explanations excluded from AI insights?](https://www.gonurture.com/tutorials/signal/troubleshooting/why-are-low-effort-explanations-excluded-from-ai-insights.md) - [Creating open answer questions](https://www.gonurture.com/tutorials/signal/creating-sessions/creating-open-answer-questions.md) Still stuck? We're happy to help you directly. [Get in touch with the Nurture team](https://www.gonurture.com/contact-us.md).