Introduction

The best definition of the term “Paraphrase”, ‘is to convert the writing of another individual into your own’. It represents a best practice in writing that prevents plagiarism and, at the same time, enhances understanding by providing one’s perspective of another person’s writing.

What is the term ‘paraphrase’

Paraphrasing is an alternative to directly quoting the writer of a text. In writing, the use of too many direct quotations is not conventional. With paraphrasing, students have the ability to formulate other people’s ideas using their own words.

Why is Paraphrasing Used in Writing?

Paraphrasing is, therefore, considered better than quoting, and the reason is that it;

1. Demonstrates that a student has adequately made sense of the source and that they have managed to develop their own ideas from the writing.
2. It makes the work of a student more original.
3. It takes more work to paraphrase that quote, and the effort goes towards helping students understand concepts better and thus develop knowledge.

Tips about paraphrasing

For an effective paraphrase, one needs to:

1. Thoroughly read the text. One can read the text multiple times
2. Think about the content of the text and explain it in your head or out loud
3. Note down important points
4. Write down the paraphrase in your own words
5. Countercheck to make sure that all the relevant points from the text have been incorporated in the paraphrase.

Citing Sources Used after Paraphrasing

As mentioned above, paraphrasing involves using another individual work to write papers. Work done using paraphrasing is not original, and it is for this reason, credit should be given to the original contributor of the information. Citing the sources used after paraphrasing is a critical process that demonstrates the ethical use of information provided by other people.

Citing sources is also important because it offers substantial support to the claims and arguments presented. Citing also provides readers with information about the contributors of the original content.

Paraphrasing is Not the Same as Summarizing

Paraphrasing and summarizing are sometimes used interchangeably. However, they are different from one another. On the one hand, paraphrasing entails rewriting the information from someone else. A critical aspect of paraphrasing is that it is expected that the original passage and the one developed after paraphrasing should be approximately the same length. On the other hand, summarizing is the partial description of particular content. Summarizing is associated with descriptions of the outcome of particular information and represents a condensed version of a text.

Avoiding Plagiarism During Paraphrasing

Plagiarism is the ideas and work of another individual as your own without acknowledging them. There is usually a significant risk of plagiarism during paraphrasing. One of the approaches to avoiding plagiarism is making sure that the information is represented based on the complete formulation of the other person’s ideas in your own words. This means that there needs to be a complete rewrite of the text. Incorporating citations and references is also an important way of avoiding plagiarism. Citations and references help with acknowledging the work of the individual the text was obtained. As explained above, the use of citations and references represents the ethical use of information.

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