Paraphrase is the restatement, in fresh language and structure, of a brief passage — usually a sentence or two — from a source. This chapter will explain how to paraphrase well, and why it's worth your time to do it.

Why paraphrase?

Problem: You're writing a paper. You're using sources. How do you make your paper speak your voice, your ideas, instead of just stitching together the voices of your sources?

You do it by paraphrasing. Instead of quoting, use fresh words — your voice — to restate key ideas from your sources.

Problem: You've found sources for your paper and you've located key passages in those sources, but you're not certain you really understand those passages. How can you make sense of them?

You do it by paraphrasing. Instead of just copying and quoting the key passages, force yourself to understand your source well enough that you can say it in your own words. In an article on multitasking, you see a sentence like this, and you think it's an important one:

"If this sounds more like an affliction than a resume booster, that's because research has shown again and again that the human mind isn't meant to multitask. Even worse, research shows that multitasking can have long-term harmful effects on brain function (Lapowsky)."

But what do you do with this passage? You could copy it and put quotation marks around it, but why? There's nothing special about the wording, no particular expression of the ideas that is unique to the writer or compelling for your audience. Your only reason for quoting, then, would be because it is easy to copy and cite. What is easy, however, is seldom rhetorically effective; it seldom enhances your text and increases your readers' esteem for you. It's much more effective to paraphrase it; that way you can ignore the opening phrase, which your readers don't need, and blend the ideas into your text using your own voice:

Not only are our brains not designed for multitasking, but we can actually injure them by trying to do it (Lapowsky).

These two motivations for paraphrase — keeping your text in your own voice, and understanding your sources — lead to a third good reason to paraphrase: to put yourself in charge of your own writing, so that you are speaking not only in your own voice but from your own mind. When your text just stitches together quotations from sources, you're not speaking for yourself. When you paraphrase, though, you have taken possession of the material from your sources. You now "own" it. You understand it, and you can speak it yourself.

What does good paraphrase look like?

Good paraphrase has the following features:

1. It accurately expresses the ideas and information from a short passage — typically 1-3 sentences.
2. It expresses the source's ideas and information in fresh language. Quotation is used only to introduce keywords.
3. It does not include patchwriting; the rephrasing of the source goes beyond just changing a few words or reordering the sentence.
4. It may be shorter than, as long as, or longer than the sentences it is rephrasing.
5. The source it is paraphrasing is cited.

How does good paraphrase happen?

Good paraphrase restates a passage from a source, in fresh language. Here's the trick: "fresh language" doesn't mean just changing a few words or verb tenses so that the passage isn't identical. It means actually saying the ideas from the source in a new voice.

Good paraphrase happens when you read a source passage until you understand it; that understanding is essential. If you don't understand it, you can't say it in your own voice; all you can do is fiddle with the wording.

It's very difficult (almost impossible!) to write good paraphrase while looking at the source. As long as you're looking at the passage you're paraphrasing, you won't be able to say it yourself; you'll just be trying to figure out how to change the words. Try this instead: read the passage; turn away from the source; and write what it says. Don't look at the source until you're finished. Then, once you have a draft of your paraphrase, go back to the source and make sure what you wrote was accurate. If it wasn't, make necessary revisions. This technique isn't easy; it takes practice. As you practice, though, you'll find yourself getting better and better at paraphrase — and at reading comprehension.

In most cases, good paraphrase does not include quotation. If you're stitching together quoted passages, you're avoiding plagiarism, but you're not paraphrasing.

Yet sometimes the source uses words for which there are no synonyms. These might be technical language; statistics; lists of mundane items; or keywords that vividly capture an idea. These should not be paraphrased; instead, quote (and cite) them the first time you use them in your text. Afterwards, just use them; you don't need to quote and cite them over and over within a single text that you're writing.

An important question to ask yourself before you decide to quote technical language: is it "technical" because it has no synonyms, or is it "technical" just because you don't understand it? If your answer is the latter, you need to work more with the material, so that you can paraphrase it. Don't quote a sentence just because you don't understand it!

When using statistics from a source, the numbers cannot be paraphrased and do not need to be quoted (though the source must be cited):

Sometimes the material you need from a source is a list. You may be able to paraphrase it — usually by generalizing about it rather than finding synonyms for each item in the list. Sometimes, however, the list contains mundane items — names of states or people, for example - that cannot be paraphrased. In this case you must copy the list exactly, quote it, and cite it.

Keywords aren't the same as technical language; keywords are particular words or phrases that are central to the information in the source. Sometimes they are quite ordinary, such as "personal computers" in the example below. Deciding what is and isn't a keyword is usually a matter of interpretation and critical reading; not everyone will agree on the identification of keywords. You should be conservative about identifying keywords, keeping in mind that they are special, central terms. If you're finding several keywords in every sentence you're paraphrasing, you've gone too far.

When you have read your source carefully and have identified keywords, you should use them rather than finding paraphrases for them. If they are ordinary language, such as "personal computers," you don't need to quote them:

Avoid patchwriting!

In the middle-school version of paraphrase, the writer makes surface changes to sentences from the source, by rearranging words, changing their grammatical structure, or using synonyms. This is patchwriting. It isn't really paraphrase, because it isn't restating ideas in the writer's own voice. It's just the writer tinkering with the source sentences, hiding the fact that they're being copied. Writers patchwrite when they're working too quickly with source material, not slowing down enough to think about what the source is actually saying. Writers also patchwrite when they don't understand what they are reading. It's impossible to restate what you don't understand!

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