Plagiarism and Paraphrasing

What is a Paraphrase?

One of the goals of a research project is to defend your argument or claim by using other sources as evidence. We do this when we argue or engage in a discussion with our friends; we backup our claims by including evidence from other sources, perhaps by sharing information from an article we’ve read or a show we’ve watched.

Why Paraphrase?

Quotes are useful and great to use in a paper, but not as the sole content of the paper. Imagine filling a paper with nothing but quotes related to your topic. It’d be easy to do, but the paper would not include any of your own thoughts and your teacher may view the paper as lazy and not well written. On the other hand, with a paraphrase you put the information into your own words. This demonstrates that you’ve understood and critically considered information. In addition, it’s an opportunity for you to demonstrate your own thoughts on the topic.

How to Paraphrase

Follow these steps to paraphrase text from a source:

1. Read the text from the original source and re-read it again to fully comprehend the author’s meaning.

2. Put the information to the side and without looking at it, rewrite the information in your own words and in your own style.

3. Glance at the original source again to make sure you have included the key concepts in your paraphrase.

4. Even though you paraphrased the information in your own words, you still need to show that the information came from another source. You do this by creating an in-text citation and placing it after the paraphrase.