By Kate Moss, Ph.D, Doctoral Lecturer and Full-time Faculty, General Education & BA in Liberal Studies Writing Fellows (WAC) and Tutoring Coordinator
When you use information from a source, you may do one of three things:
- Summarize the information and cite the source;
- Quote the source directly and cite the source; or
- Paraphrase the material thoroughly and cite the source.
Paraphrasing is an important skill to master as you will use it in any writing that uses source material.
To paraphrase sufficiently, you need to both:
- Put the author’s ideas into your own words, and
- Change the structure of the sentence or passage, so you are not copying that.
The most common mistake we see with paraphrasing is not paraphrasing sufficiently. It’s very important that you thoroughly paraphrase in order to avoid academic integrity issues.
Useful links:
- “Paraphrasing” from Excelsior OWL explains why paraphrasing is important and gives examples of how to put source material into your own words.
- “Paraphrasing Structure” from Excelsior OWL explains why it’s important to change the structure of the sentence or passage when paraphrasing, and how to do this.
- In “Finding, Using and Citing Sources in APA Format” (2021), SPS Writing Fellow Kajal Patel gives tips on paraphrasing and shares examples of insufficiently and sufficiently paraphrased source material. (Note this is a recording of a live webinar so there is reference to polls.) You can watch just the relevant section beginning at 31:07 here.
- This “Paraphrasing Activity” from Excelsior OWL quizzes you briefly on your ability to recognize passages which have been thoroughly paraphrased to change their words and structure.
