Contributors


Writing Program
English Dept

Paraphrasing:

When writing any kind of paper that requires outside research, you should use a minimum of direct quotes. Quoting a source is a good idea only under the following circumstances:

1. The author has written an idea in such a way that changing the wording of it would change the idea.
2. The wording of the quote is particularly rhetorically pleasing.
3. The author is one of the most important authorities in the field and quoting them will give your argument persuasive power. If one of these does not apply, then you should either paraphrase or summarize the source. As a general rule (and remember that this is just a general guideline and thus subject to all kinds of modification on your part), only about 1/3 of your source use should be direct quotes. The remaining 2/3 of the sources you cite in your paper should be paraphrased or summarized.

What is Paraphrasing?

When you paraphrase a source, you change the wording of the original text but preserve the general meaning and order of ideas. This is the kind of source use that you will probably use more often than any other. Paraphrasing is an effective writing tool because it allows you to back up your ideas with evidence from outside sources, while still maintaining the rhetorical power of word choice for yourself. Any time you quote a source, you give a little bit of your power as writer to someone else. When you paraphrase, however, you can borrow another person's ideas (with the correct citation method, of course), without giving up the power of a writer.

A paraphrase should be as long as (or possible longer than) the original source. Think of it as an orange. When you buy an orange, you peel it; you pull apart the sections and rearrange it. By the time you're actually ready to eat it, it looks a lot different than the original, but it is still composed of all the same parts. The same is true of a paraphrase. You will pull the original apart, section it out, change it around, but it will not get smaller, it will only look different.

As an example, let's look at the following paragraph from the editorial "Lax Gun Laws Help Terrorists," by Thomas Oliphant in the Boston Globe, Sept. 25, 2001.

The weapons and ammunition [the terrorists] smuggled abroad included numerous items purchased at gun shows - the ideal shopping mall for criminals in general and terrorists in particular and one that has been used repeatedly for a decade.

As if anyone needs reminding of how a crook-friendly system operates in the United States, [anyone can] go shopping at gun shows in Michigan because federal and state law does not require that thorough background checks on would-be weapons buyers be completed before such sales by unlicensed ''dealers.''

Now, a paraphrase of the above two paragraphs might look something like this:

According to Thomas Oliphant (2001), recent terrorist activity in Lebanon was facilitated by the smuggling of weapons that had been purchased by the terrorists at gun shows in Michigan. Because the law (both U.S. and Michigan State) does not mandate background checks on gun buyers if they are purchasing the guns from unlicensed civilians, anyone (even those with criminal records) can purchase weapons at these shows. Because of this, for more than ten years, gun shows have been a popular place for terrorists and other criminals to purchase weapons. The ease with which criminals can acquire weapons at these shows inspired Oliphant to name them an "ideal shopping mall for terrorists."

Notice that in the above paragraph, I have preserved the ideas and meaning of the original source. In fact, if you were to read each sentence in my paraphrase, and find its equal in the original, you would see that each sentence corresponds directly to a sentence in the original. However, the wording has been entirely changed except for a few words that don't have synonyms or that don't directly belong to Oliphant.

I have also maintained the length of the original---in fact, my paragraph is a full line longer than Oliphant's. I was careful to include in my paraphrase all of the information that was in the original text.

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