Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing is one of the key skills students need at university. It means expressing information, ideas, or work done by someone else in your own words.

To paraphrase successfully, we need to do more than just change a few of the words. We can also:

change a sentence from active to passive or passive to active
change the order of the sentence
break longer sentences into shorter sentences
write in your own particular style.

Let's use the following sentence as an example. It comes from a fictional book from 2024 called Emotion intelligence at home and at work by a fictional author called Lars Bergström:

Original text:
Emotional intelligence is crucial for navigating workplace dynamics and fostering effective collaboration.

First, let's look at an unsuccessful paraphrase of this sentence where the author has simply used a few synonyms:

Unsuccessful paraphrase:
Emotional intelligence is vital for managing office dynamics and encouraging effective collaboration.

And now, here is a successful attempt at paraphrasing the sentence.
It is successful because:

Synonyms or near synonyms replace words from the original:
- workplace interactions replaces workplace dynamics
- manage replaces navigating
- team work replaces collaboration
- necessary replaces crucial
- enhance replaces fostering
The sentence has a different structure: The original sentence begins with emotional intelligence, but in the paraphrase, emotional intelligence is mentioned toward the end of the sentence.
The citation Bergström (2022) is included.

Successful paraphrase:
Bergström (2022) highlights that to effectively manage workplace interactions and enhance teamwork, developing the crucial skill of emotional intelligence is necessary.

Steps to paraphrasing

An effective way to create paraphrases is to:

read the information that you would like to paraphrase a few times.
without looking at the information, rewrite it in your own words. This way you will not be influenced by the original text.
reread your paraphrase and the original text, checking that the original meaning has been kept and that your paraphrase is not too similar to the original.
compare your language to the original text to make sure your version is different. A thesaurus or dictionary can help you with this. A good goal is to aim for no more than 4 words in a row that are the same as in the original source.
Don’t forget that you need to include a citation every time you paraphrase.

Avoiding plagiarism

Correct paraphrasing is crucial to avoid plagiarism. Simply changing a few words or rearranging sentences from another source still constitutes plagiarism. A proper paraphrase must significantly differ in vocabulary and structure from the original.

Plagiarism-detection tools like Turnitin will flag content that's too similar to existing works, even with minor word changes.

New AI tools, such as ChatGPT, can paraphrase text, but content from these tools also requires proper referencing. Their use may not always be allowed, so it's important to understand your course requirements and consult your instructor to avoid academic misconduct.

Practice paraphrasing

Read the text below, and then select the best paraphrase from the two options given.

Please note: The examples on this page use the APA 7th edition referencing style. Check your course handbook or speak to your instructor about the referencing style required in your area of study.

References
Laudon KC and Laudon JP (2000) Management information systems: managing the digital firm, 6th edn, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.