Researching

Finding information, using the ideas of others, citing sources.

Paraphrase

Paraphrasing is putting material into your own words while still keeping the same meaning. You should paraphrase when what a source says (its meaning) is important in your paper, but the source’s exact words are not important in your paper. When the exact words are important, you should be quoting.

Paraphrasing is where many students get into trouble with plagiarism. When you paraphrase, you cannot just rearrange a few words or use synonyms. Instead, the passage should be rewritten almost completely, while still keeping the meaning.

Example 1:

Original: “Christopher was so mad that he got caught cheating that he ended up punching a hole in the wall.”

	Christopher got so mad that the teacher caught him cheating; he ended up punching a hole in the wall.
	Christopher retaliated by punching a hole in the wall after he was caught cheating.

In the strong paraphrase, you are keeping the same idea: you are still talking about how mad Christopher was and what caused him to punch a hole in the wall. However, you have significantly rearranged the sentence so the wording is your own.

Example 2:

Original: “Fortunately, the Constitution of the United States knows no distinction between citizens on account of color. Neither does it know any difference between a citizen of a State and a citizen of the United States. Citizenship evidently includes all the rights of citizens, whether State or national. If the Constitution knows none, it is clearly no part of the duty of a Republican Congress now to institute one” (from a speech by Frederick Douglass in 1866).

Frederick Douglass points out that, fortunately, the U.S. Constitution does not make a distinction between citizens because of color. Nor does it make a distinction between a citizen of a state and a citizen of the United States. Citizenship includes the rights of all citizens, whether state or national. If the Constitution does not make a distinction, it is not the duty of the Congress to make one.

Frederick Douglass points out that the Constitution does not distinguish between citizens based on color, nor does it care which state they live in. He argues that if the Constitution does not make these distinctions, Congress should not either.

The weak paraphrase here is too close to the original text in both structure and phrasing. The stronger paraphrase moves further away from Douglass’ language while keeping to his original point.

In MLA, it is extremely important that you give credit to the source that you are paraphrasing. If you do not, you might get accused of plagiarizing. Note that APA does not require in-text citations for paraphrases.

Source

Hacker, Diana. A Writer’s Reference. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007.