Writing Support Resources

It is easy to copy and paste information. When you do so, you must add "quotes" to your paper.  But your professor wants to know that you understand the information, so you should paraphrase.

Paraphrasing involves reading the information, thinking about it, and then rewording it in your own way. while still preserving the original meaning. This is a crucial skill for academic writing, avoiding plagiarism, and improving clarity.

To paraphrase effectively, read the original text thoroughly, understand its core message, and then rewrite it in your own words, using different sentence structures and vocabulary.

Think of paraphrasing as recalling and describing the idea to someone else, in this case, the reader.

If I asked you what did you do yesterday? You would recall the key moments, and tell me about them, which is paraphrasing. YOu know there were many details you felt were not important in the conversation with me. You would not tell me every minute of your day, just the highlights. Perhaps you would say I took my car to the garage, then went to the doctor and had lunch with mom.

What you are not likely to say all the unnecessary details...  I drove 7.5 miles to the garage, waited in line 5 minutes, got irritated about the cost of the airfilters they wanted to install as part of the oil change, then drove 8 miles to the doctors, passing through 6 red lights, and saw a bird on a telephone pole in the parking lot of the doctor. Then I drove 4 miles to pickup mom and we went to this little tea place for lunch and she told me that I was late. Of course I was late, I had to wait at the doctors for 35 minutes!

When you paraphrase:

1. You read the information
2. Jot down some notes on what you think is important
3. Then rewrite the notes into sentences
4. Check the original to make sure you are capturing the main ideas.