How to Paraphrase a Text Quickly

Paraphrasing involves expressing another author’s ideas in your own original words. The quickest way to paraphrase the text is to use a paraphrasing service, but if you don’t have the budget for paraphrasing services, this article shows how you can paraphrase a text efficiently and effectively by yourself.

It is worth noting a few preliminaries to begin with:

·         Whenever you paraphrase, you must cite the source

·         If your paraphrasing is overly similar to the original, you may be committing plagiarism

·         Paraphrasing is best used as an alternative to direct quotation

With these preliminaries in mind, the rest of this article is concerned with explaining a quick and foolproof method of paraphrasing, along with important paraphrasing tips to speed up the quality and efficiency of your work.

 

Five-step paraphrasing process

To paraphrase the text quickly, you can follow these steps:

1.      Read through the source text until you have fully grasped its meaning

2.      Make a note of the key concepts and points covered in the source text

3.      Write a new version of the text without looking back at the source text

4.      Compare your paraphrasing to the source text and make any changes needed to reduce the level of similarity

5.      Add a reference to the source that you paraphrased

 

Tips for easy and quick paraphrasing

The five-step paraphrasing process described above is not straightforward to apply in practice. Many students find that paraphrasing, despite seeming easy, is a time-consuming and complex task.

Some tips for easy and quick paraphrasing are presented as follows:

1.      Use as many synonyms as possible

2.      Alter the structure of the sentences in the source text

3.      Separate the information into different sentences

4.      Begin your opening sentence at a different place compared to the source text

To illustrate, consider the following paraphrased passage in which all four of the above-mentioned tips have been applied. The original quotation is:

In The Sopranos, the mob is besieged as much by inner infidelity as it is by the federal government. Early in the series, the greatest threat to Tony's Family is his own biological family. 

The paraphrased version of this quote, which was created by applying the four tips described above, is the following:

In the first season of The Sopranos, Tony Soprano’s mobster activities are more threatened by members of his biological family than by agents of the federal government.

 

Avoiding plagiarism

Many writers believe that paraphrasing is a form of plagiarism.

However, when you paraphrase another author, you can always avoid the risk of plagiarism by ensuring the following:

·         Do not forget to cite the source

·         Use a plagiarism scanner (e.g., Turnitin)

·         Avoid excessive similarity with the source

In short, if you paraphrase a text effectively, you can always avoid plagiarism. As you always, if you don’t have the time to paraphrase your work, consider using a rewriting service or a paraphrasing service.