How to Paraphrase

How to Paraphrase

What is a Paraphrase?: Writing a sentence in your own words that captures the original passage’s meaning.

• ^{1. Putting all of the information from a source into your own words.}

• ^{2. Usually as long or longer than the original source.}

• ^{3. Used only for short passages of a source.}

• ^{4. Different words and different sentence structure than original.}

5 Steps of Paraphrasing

• Read Several Times

• Note Key Concepts 

• Write your own version (without looking at the original)

• Compare the texts  

• Cite the source

5 Tips for Paraphrasing

• 1. Start at a different point than the original

• 2. Use synonyms!

• 3. Change sentence structure

• 4. Break up long sentences or combine shorter ones

• 5. Change word forms 

Paraphrase Vs. Quotation

• Most of the time you will use paraphrase rather than quotation

• Paraphrasing makes it easier to incorporate the ideas of another writer into your paper.

• Use paraphrase to give your readers an accurate and comprehensive account of ideas in your source.

Paraphrase Vs. Summary

• A paraphrase records a short passage; a summary records a passage of any length.

• A paraphrase covers every point in the passage; a summary condenses and includes only main ideas.

• A paraphrase records ideas in the same order as the original passage; a summary changes the order of ideas when necessary to make the summary more coherent.

• A paraphrase does not interpret; a summary might explain or interpret.

• A paraphrase is a bit shorter than the original; a summary is much shorter than the original.

Characteristics of a Bad Paraphrase

• Misunderstanding: writer of paraphrase misunderstands the text.

• Adding: writer puts his own ideas into the text.

• Guessing: writer only understood part of the material and ignores the part they didn’t understand.

• Plagiarizing or sloppy paraphrasing: writer uses too many of the words, phrases and sentence structures of the original source.

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How many words can you copy without plagiarizing?

The rule of thumb is: More than THREE consecutive words, not counting short words such as "a," "the," "but," "in," "an," or "and" need either quotation marks and a footnote or acknowledgement of the author in the text of your paper.

Summarizing is easier than quoting and paraphrasing and you've probably practiced it since you were in first grade. Summarizing means answering these questions:

• What is the main idea?

• What is that passage about?

• What is the most important point?

• What is the author trying to claim?