Posted: September 14th, 2017

Paraphrasing as a strategy of avoiding plagiarism

Paraphrasing as a strategy of avoiding plagiarism

In order to avoid plagiarizing, a student must learn to paraphrase. A paraphrase precisely restates in YOUR WORDS the written or spoken words of someone else. A paraphrase is your wording but not your thinking. A paraphrased idea must be documented even though it’s not quoted directly.
Guidelines for Writing Paraphrases
1 Say what the source says, but no more.
2 Reproduce the source’s order of ideas without having the source in front of you.
3 Use your own words, phrasing, and sentence structure to restate the message.
4 Read your sentences over to make sure they do not distort the source’s meaning.
5 Document carefully. You are required to give the source of any paraphrase, just as you do for quotations.
Examples
The following example badly plagiarizes both the structure and the words of the original quotation by Jessica Mitford in Kind and Unusual Punishment:
ORIGINAL: The character and mentality of the keepers may be of more importance in understanding prisons than the character and mentality of the kept.
PLAGIARISM: But the character of prison officials (the keepers) is more important in understanding prisons than the character of prisoners (the kept).
The next example is more subtle plagiarism because it changes Mitford’s sentence structure, but it still uses her words.
PLAGIARISM: In understanding prisons, we should know more about the character and mentality of the keepers than of the kept.
AVOIDING PLAGIARISM IN PARAPHRASING
The plagiarism in the above examples can be remedied two ways: Mitford’s exact words can be placed in quotation marks, or correct paraphrasing can be used.
QUOTATION: According to one critic of the penal system, “The character and mentality of the keepers may be of more importance in understanding prisons than the character and mentality of the kept” (Mitford 9).
PARAPHRASE: One critic of the penal system maintains that we may be able to learn more about prisons from the psychology of the prison officials than from that of the prisoners (Mitford 9).

Form and Punctuation for Documentation
After a direct quote:
…in the lives of Daisy and Tom” (Eble 319).
After paraphrase:
…in relation to Fitzgerald’s career (Poupard and Persons 146).
After a long quote set off from the text:
…according to the history of the Jazz Age. (Turbin xii)
When critic’s name is mentioned in text:
Malcolm Cowley strongly suggests that this is true “when discussing Gatsby and his relationships in relation to the American Dream” (50).
When you use more than one book by the same author:
…as Nick comments throughout this incident” (Eble, F. Scott Fitzgerald 14).
…which is Gatsby’s particular brand of dishonesty” (Eble, Hemingway 85).
When you use a book by two authors:
…and had a profound effect on his life” (Baker and Cole 138).
When you use a book by three or more authors:
…are bound to produce new forms of subjectivity” (Henriques et al. 275).

Tag Words
Verbs used to help weave quotations into your writing are sometimes called “tag words.” A number of these words have rather specific meanings, while others are appropriate in most situations. Choose the ones that fit your context from the following representative word list:

1 affirms
2 alleges
3 announces
4 argues
5 ascertains
6 asserts
7 believes
8 cites
9 claims
10 complains
11 concedes
12 concludes
13 contends
14 deduces
15 demonstrates
16 describes
17 disagrees
18 emphasizes
19 explains
20 explores
21 finds
22 grants
23 implies
24 informs
25 insists
26 maintains
27 notes
28 observes
29 offers
30 offers another view
31 points out
32 proposes
33 protests
34 queries
35 questions
36 quotes
37 rails
38 reaffirms
39 recalls
40 recommends
41 reflects
42 reiterates
43 repeats
44 reports
45 reveals
46 says
47 shares
48 shows
49 speculates
50 states
51 stresses
52 submits
53 suggests
54 supposes
55 takes exception
56 tells
57 thinks
58 volunteers
59 writes
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