Library Guides: Paraphrasing - an overview: What is Paraphrasing? (2024)

FAQs

Library Guides: Paraphrasing - an overview: What is Paraphrasing? ›

Paraphrasing means expressing someone else's ideas in your own voice, while keeping the same essential meaning. Summarising means taking a long passage of text from someone else and condensing the main ideas in your own words.

Paraphrase Definitions

As a verb, “to paraphrase” means “to express the meaning of the writer or speaker (or something written or spoken) using different words, especially to achieve greater clarity.” As a noun, “paraphrase” is defined as “a rewording of something written or spoken by someone else.”

Key Resource: The 4 R's--A Paraphrasing Strategy

Review the graphic below that explains the 4 R's: Read, Restate, Recheck, and Repair and use the attached graphic organizer to help you practice paraphrasing by using this strategy.

Original: Her life spanned years of incredible change for women. Paraphrase: Mary lived through an era of liberating reform for women. Original: Giraffes like Acacia leaves and hay and they can consume 75 pounds of food a day. Paraphrase: A giraffe can eat up to 75 pounds of Acacia leaves and hay every day.

Improper paraphrasing is a very common form of plagiarism. This occurs when one lifts a direct phrase from another work and changes just a few words - and then claims the work as wholly their own. Learning how to properly paraphrase is a very important component of good writing.

To paraphrase means to restate someone else's ideas in your own language at roughly the same level of detail. To summarize means to reduce the most essential points of someone else's work into a shorter form.

To introduce you to this world of academic writing, in this chapter I suggest that you should focus on five hierarchical characteristics of good writing, or the “5 Cs” of good academic writing, which include Clarity, Cogency, Conventionality, Completeness, and Concision.

Identify the main point(s) and key words. Cover the original text and rewrite it in your own words. Check that you have included the main points and essential information. Write the paraphrase in your own style.

Simply put, paraphrasing means that when sharing someone else's ideas and information, you do so using your own words. The golden rule of paraphrasing is that you must fully understand the source information before attempting to re-write it.

What are two tips that should be followed when paraphrasing? ›

1. Original—paraphrases should use your own fresh vocabulary, phrasing, and sentence structure, not the sentence structure, phrasing and words of your source. 2. Accurate—paraphrases must precisely reflect the ideas, tone, and emphasis of your source.

paraphrase (verb as in interpret, translate) Strongest matches. rephrase transcribe. Strong matches. disambiguate recapitulate rehash render restate reword summarize.

Remember, paraphrasing is using your own words to express someone else's ideas. If the wording of the paraphrase is too close to the wording of the original, then it is plagiarism. The main ideas need to come through, but the wording has to be your own.

A paraphrase should show that you have taken in the author's idea, understood it, and can explain it in your own words. Therefore, your rewrite should look totally different from the original.

As a verb: To paraphrase something means to express it in different words, while still keeping the same meaning.

Even though you use your own words, you must still cite the original source from which you obtained the content or idea (both in-text and in your references list). If you paraphrase a source but fail to cite the original source, you are committing plagiarism.

Paraphrasing is important because it shows you understand the source well enough to write it in your own words. It also gives you a powerful alternative to using direct quotes, which should be used infrequently.

Direct Paraphrasing: Provides sentence-by-sentence rephrasing while maintaining the original meaning. Indirect Paraphrasing: Offers different ways to express the same ideas without closely following the original structure.