16 Say It in Your Own Words: Paraphrasing

What Is Paraphrasing?

Paraphrasing means writing someone else’s idea using different words and sentence structure. It is a way to include an author’s idea in your writing without quoting (directly copying the same words and using quotation marks). Paraphrasing also helps you avoid plagiarism if you do it correctly.

When you paraphrase correctly, you must do ALL these things:

• • Use different words. Do not copy more than two words together from the original source.
  • Change the sentence structure or the order of the words
  • Use author tags or signal phrases to show that this idea does not belong to you.
  • Don’t change the meaning of the original source.
  • Cite your source. This means to tell (cite) where you found the information (your source). In this chapter, we will use the author’s last name and the year of publication as our citation. Your teacher may have a different method of citing that you should follow in your assignments.

What Does It Look Like?

Although you will use paraphrasing when you write a summary, summarizing and paraphrasing are not the same thing. When you paraphrase another person’s ideas, your paraphrased writing will be about the same length as the original sentence or paragraph. This is different from summarizing, when your writing is shorter than the original text.

Let’s look at an example of a good paraphrase, based on this original sentence below:

Here is a good paraphrase of the sentence above:

Stauffer explained that over the last ten years, students are borrowing twice as much money to pay for their education because the cost of college has increased as well (2023).  

Why is this a good paraphrase?

Notice the different words this student uses to communicate the author’s idea:

• • • higher education expenses → the cost of college
    • have gone up → has increased
    • student loan balance has doubled → students are borrowing twice as much money
    • during the last decade → over the last ten years

Notice how the structure of the sentence has changed

• • • In the original, education expenses are mentioned first, and student loan debt is mentioned second. In the paraphrase, student loans are mentioned first, followed by education costs.
    • In the original sentence, “student loan debt” is the subject of the sentence. In the paraphrase, “students” are the subject.

In the paraphrase, the student mentioned the author’s name as a way to show this is someone else’s idea. The student also placed the year the article was published at the end of the sentence – this is called the citation.

The student did not change the meaning of the original text. When you read both the original and the paraphrase, the meaning is the same.

Now, here is an example of an incorrect paraphrase of the same text:

According to Stauffer, while college expenses have risen in the last decade, student loan debt has also increased – the average student loan balance is twice as high now (2023).

Can you spot what’s wrong with this paraphrase?

• • • The paraphrase uses some different words, includes an author tag and citation, and the meaning is the same. That’s good!
    • However, there are several words that are the same in both sentences. That’s NOT a good paraphrase.
    • Also, the sentence structure and word order is almost identical to the original sentence. The original and the paraphrase are too similar, so this is NOT a good paraphrase.

Steps to Paraphrase Correctly

1. Read the original text several times until you understand the meaning. Use the dictionary if you need it.
2. Think about or write down the main points of the original text. Try to do this without looking at the original.
3. Write your paraphrase, using new words and different sentence structure.
4. Compare your writing with the original. Does it have the same meaning? Make sure you didn’t copy any words or sentence structure.
5. Add citation and/or author tag to show that the information is someone else’s idea.

You Try It!

Choose one or two of the passages below and try to write a paraphrase. Then, compare your paraphrase with your classmates.

• Research has shown that immigrants who retain their home language while learning English are likelier to graduate from high school than those who stop speaking their home language. They are also likelier to go to college and enter higher-paying careers.” “Students teach each other their home languages,” By Zaidee Stavely, Public Radio International, 2019
• Natasha Warner and other linguists once considered the Native American Mutsun language to be almost extinct, because there were no fluent speakers. With the help of linguists, a new Mutsun dictionary and the Mutsun elders, however, the language is coming back to life.  “Native American women are reclaiming their language,” By Megan Botel, The Washington Post, 2021
• Until the 1970s, using every bit of an animal, fruit or vegetable was the norm. “Every culture had a way of dealing with food scraps. That’s the idea behind scrapple, soups, sorbets and agua frescas, for example,” said Jonathan Deutsch, director of the Drexel Food Lab. Scrapple is a seasoned mixture of ground meat and cornmeal that is formed into a loaf, sliced and then fried. “Drexel food lab wants to minimize food waste,” By Lynette Hazelton, Philadelphia Inquirer, 2023