Paraphrasing

Writing & examination

Definition

Restating a source's idea entirely in your own words and structure, with citation — the core skill separating legitimate scholarship from patchwriting and plagiarism.

Paraphrasing is restating another author's idea in your own words and sentence structure while citing the source. Done well it demonstrates comprehension and lets you integrate evidence into your own argument, which is why a thesis should rely on it far more than on direct quotation.

The technique that works is straightforward: read the passage until you understand it, close the source, write the idea from memory in your own words, then compare against the original to confirm the meaning is intact and the phrasing genuinely differs. Substituting synonyms while keeping the original structure is patchwriting, which text-matching software detects and examiners treat as plagiarism.

Cite the source even though no words are quoted — the idea is still borrowed. Reserve direct quotation for definitions, precise technical formulations and passages whose exact wording matters. Automated paraphrasing tools frequently distort technical meaning and produce text that reads as machine-generated, so any output must be checked line by line against the original.