Paraphrasing and Plagiarizing
When you're working on a writing project, you often want to report something that someone else said. For example, you might need to use information from a book or a reading passage to support your own argument.Sometimes, you do this by quoting directly from the source text. For example, you might say something like: The Declaration of Independence says that 'all men are created equal.' But sometimes, you don't want to quote the author's exact words; you just need to quickly describe his or her main point.
That's called paraphrasing. Paraphrasing is using your own words to report another author's ideas while crediting the author for the original thought.For example, you could paraphrase the Declaration of Independence by saying, The Declaration of Independence asserts the fundamental equality of all men. Here, you're still getting the idea of equality, but you've put it in your own words and dropped the quotation marks.
Paraphrasing is a great way to summarize someone's argument, but when you paraphrase, it's important not to accidentally start plagiarizing. Plagiarism is trying to pass off another author's exact words or ideas as your own.
Here's an example of what not to do: The Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. There are no quotation marks here, so this sentence is trying to claim the language of the Declaration as your own writing. That's dishonest -- it's a form of stealing.
It's also plagiarizing if you use someone else's idea but don't say where you got it from.
Plagiarizing is not acceptable under any circumstances. If your teachers catch you doing it on purpose, they might give you a failing grade for the paper or even for the class. It's also unacceptable on standardized tests like the TOEFL. So in this lesson, you'll learn how to paraphrase without plagiarizing, even accidentally.
Strategies for Paraphrasing
Many students who struggle with paraphrasing don't mean to steal anything; they just don't know effective strategies for reporting someone else's ideas without using their exact words. So here are some concrete strategies for paraphrasing without veering into plagiarism.
We'll use the sentence: The Declaration of Independence states that 'all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.' Our goal is to replace that quotation with a paraphrase.
To paraphrase this, we'll need to fundamentally change the structure of the sentences. You can't paraphrase by just changing one or two words or by substituting synonyms. Here's how to do it:
- Look away from the source text and write your paraphrase on a clean piece of paper. This will help you engage with the author's idea, and not accidentally start following his or her wording too closely.
- Imagine that you're explaining the original text to someone who doesn't understand it. This will force you to come up with different ways to phrase important ideas.
- If key concepts are expressed using one part of speech, try expressing them with another. For example, the adjective 'equal' is a key word in the original text. In your paraphrase, you might change it to the noun 'equality.'