How to Paraphrase | Step-by-Step Guide & Examples

Published on April 8, 2022 by Courtney Gahan and Jack Caulfield. Revised on November 4, 2022.

Paraphrasing means putting someone else’s ideas into your own words. Paraphrasing a source
involves changing the wording while preserving the original meaning.

Paraphrasing is an alternative to quoting (copying someone’s exact words and putting them

Every time you paraphrase, it’s important to cite the source. Also take care not to use wording that is
too similar to the original. Otherwise, you could be at risk of committing plagiarism.

How to paraphrase in five easy steps

If you’re struggling to get to grips with the process of paraphrasing, check out our easy step-by-step
guide in the video below.

How to paraphrase correctly

Putting an idea into your own words can be easier said than done. Let’s say you want to paraphrase
the text below, about population decline in a particular species of sea snails.

Example: Source text“Like other marine animals living near heavily populated coasts, horse conchs
have lost considerable habitat to development and pollution, including favorite breeding grounds
along mud flats and seagrass beds. Their Gulf habitat is also warming due to climate change, which
scientists think further pressures the animals, based on the negative effects extra heat has on other
big mollusks” (Barnett, 2022).

Incorrect paraphrasing

You might make a first attempt to paraphrase it by swapping out a few words for synonyms.

Example: Incorrect paraphrasing

Like other sea creatures inhabiting the vicinity of highly populated coasts, horse conchs have
lost substantial territory to advancement and contamination, including preferred breeding grounds
along mud flats and seagrass beds. Their Gulf home is also heating up due to global warming, which
scientists think further puts pressure on the creatures, predicated upon the harmful effects
extra warmth has on other large mollusks (Barnett, 2022).

This attempt at paraphrasing doesn’t change the sentence structure or order of information, only
some of the word choices. And the synonyms chosen are poor:

 “Advancement and contamination” doesn’t really convey the same meaning as

 Sometimes the changes make the tone less academic: “home” for “habitat” and “sea
creatures” for “marine animals.”

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  Adding phrases like “inhabiting the vicinity of” and “puts pressure on” makes the text
needlessly long-winded.

 Global warming is related to climate change, but they don’t mean exactly the same thing.

Because of this, the text reads awkwardly, is longer than it needs to be, and remains too close to the
original phrasing. This means you risk being accused of plagiarism.

Correct paraphrasing

Let’s look at a more effective way of paraphrasing the same text.

Example: Correct paraphrasingScientists believe that temperature rises resulting from climate change
are negatively impacting horse conchs living in the Gulf of Mexico. Development and pollution have
also deprived them of important breeding grounds (Barnett, 2022).

Here, we’ve:

 Only included the information that’s relevant to our argument (note that the paraphrase is
shorter than the original)

 Introduced the information with the signal phrase “Scientists believe that …”

 Retained key terms like “development and pollution,” since changing them could alter the
meaning

 Structured sentences in our own way instead of copying the structure of the original

 Started from a different point, presenting information in a different order

Because of this, we’re able to clearly convey the relevant information from the source without
sticking too close to the original phrasing.

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Examples of paraphrasing

Explore the tabs below to see examples of paraphrasing in action.

Source text Paraphrase

“The current research extends the previous work by The research of Brouwer (2019, p. 874)
revealing that listening to moral dilemmas could elicit a FLE suggests that the foreign-language

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Source text Paraphrase

[foreign-language effect] in highly proficient bilinguals. … effect can occur even among highly
Here, it has been demonstrated that hearing a foreign proficient bilinguals, influencing their
language can even influence moral decision making, and moral decision making, when auditory
namely promote more utilitarian-type decisions” (Brouwer, (rather than written) prompting is
2019, p. 874). given.

How to cite a paraphrase

Once you have your perfectly paraphrased text, you need to ensure you credit the original author.
You’ll always paraphrase sources in the same way, but you’ll have to use a different type of in-text
citation depending on what citation style you follow.

APA in- (Brouwer, 2019, p. 874)

MLA in- (Brouwer 874)

Chicago 1. Susanne Brouwer, “The Auditory Foreign-Language Effect of Moral Decision Making in
footnote Highly Proficient Bilinguals,” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 40,
no. 10 (2019): 874. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2019.1585863.

Paraphrasing vs. quoting

It’s a good idea to paraphrase instead of quoting in most cases because:

 Paraphrasing shows that you fully understand the meaning of a text

 Your own voice remains dominant throughout your paper

 Quotes reduce the readability of your text

But that doesn’t mean you should never quote. Quotes are appropriate when:

 Giving a precise definition

 Saying something about the author’s language or style (e.g., in a literary analysis paper)

 Providing evidence in support of an argument

 Critiquing or analyzing a specific claim

Paraphrasing vs. summarizing

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A paraphrase puts a specific passage into your own words. It’s typically a similar length to the original
text, or slightly shorter.

When you boil a longer piece of writing down to the key points, so that the result is a lot shorter than
the original, this is called summarizing.

Paraphrasing and quoting are important tools for presenting specific information from sources. But if
the information you want to include is more general (e.g., the overarching argument of a whole
article), summarizing is more appropriate.

Example: Summarizing

Martin (2016) argues it is important to consider the impact of human architecture on the evolution of
other species. Stating that the indoor biome—the realm of species that live and reproduce largely
inside human-built structures—represents an understudied area for ecologists, Martin makes the
case for studying this biome as an essential way of understanding the world of the Anthropocene.

Avoiding plagiarism when you paraphrase

When paraphrasing, you have to be careful to avoid accidental plagiarism.

This can happen if the paraphrase is too similar to the original quote, with phrases or whole
sentences that are identical (and should therefore be in quotation marks). It can also happen if you
fail to properly cite the source.

Paraphrasing tools are widely used by students, and can be especially useful for non-native speakers
who may find academic writing particularly challenging. While these can be helpful for a bit of extra
inspiration, use these tools sparingly, keeping academic integrity in mind.

To make sure you’ve properly paraphrased and cited all your sources, you could elect to run a
plagiarism check before submitting your paper. And of course, always be sure to read your source
material yourself and take the first stab at paraphrasing on your own.

Check out our research on the best plagiarism checkers in 2022, or check out Scribbr’s free plagiarism
checker that came best out of the test.

Courtney has a Bachelor in Communication and a Master in Editing and Publishing. She has worked
as a freelance writer and editor since 2013, and joined the Scribbr team as an editor in June 2017.
She loves helping students and academics all over the world improve their writing (and learning
about their research while doing so!).