PARAPHRASING

= to restate in your own words what someone else has written or said.

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You keep the same meaning of the original passage, although you can use fewer words. A good paraphrase uses different words and sentence structures from the original. In other words, say the same thing in a different way.

> Paraphrase to:

• explain someone else’s idea
• avoid too many quotes in your assignment
• present your report in your own voice

 > Watch out:

• You must change the words and the sentence structure!

Original Passage:

The purpose of note-taking is to summarise and record information you extract during research. The challenge in taking notes is to condense another writer’s thoughts into your own words without distorting the original thinking or plagiarising. As you extract information, let your knowledge of the audience and the purpose of your writing guide you. Resist the temptation to copy your source word for word as you take notes; instead, paraphrase the author’s idea or concept. You must do more than just change a few words in the original passage; otherwise, you will be guilty of plagiarism.

Passage is extracted from: G. J. Alfred, C. T. Brusaw and W. E. Oliu, Handbook of Technical Writing. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003.

A plagiarised passage:

The objective of note-taking is to summarise and record information you find during research. The difficult part about taking notes is to summarise another author’s ideas into your own words without changing the original thinking or plagiarising. When you take down information, let the target audience and objective of the writing guide you. Try not to copy word-for-word during note-taking;….

An acceptable paraphrase:

Taking notes during research serves to record the main ideas and concepts that you have found in the literature. To prevent plagiarism, modify information from other sources in your own words and sentence structure to convey the same meaning as the original author. To paraphrase or summarise effectively, bear in mind the objective of your work and the target audience.