[ Paraphrasing Sources ]
Paraphrase thoughtfully and avoid
inappropriate uses of paraphrase
Paraphrase sources when you need to present accurately the main points of another writer or
source, in your own original language without additional commentary.
For an overview of related key topics on paraphrasing sources, visit the videos and quizzes in this tutorial.
Explore It
Paraphrase sources when you need to convey the main points of a work or passage in your own original
language without distorting the meaning of the source. Look at the difference between an acceptable paraphrase and one that is inaccurate and misrepresents the original.
Original Source
The speed of information transfer has increased so dramatically because cables today encase fiber-optic
strands. The cables themselves are somewhere in between the size of the width of your thumb and the
width of your wrist. They can stretch for thousands of miles. And, today, they typically lie unarmored
and unprotected on the ocean floor. Their importance is unparalleled. In a 2006 CNET News article, Jim
Hayes, president of the Fiber Optic Association, a California-based nonprofit, said, “99 percent of the
world’s long-distance communications travel through fiber links.” Surprisingly, satellites only carry the
remaining one percent; they are just too expensive, slow, and unreliable in comparison.
—Michael Sechrist, “Cyberspace in Deep Water: Protecting the Arteries of the Internet,”
The Harvard Kennedy School Review, Annual 2010, p. 40
Inaccurate Paraphrase
Michael Sechrist concludes that the underwater cables that are so essential to long-distance
­communication should be better protected. These fiber-optic cables handle the overwhelming majority
of our communications, and satellites are not a viable alternative (40).
Accurate Paraphrase
As Michael Sechrist warns, the essential undersea fiber-optic cables that carry all of our information
network traffic are surprisingly vulnerable. Yet these cables cover almost all our Internet and phone traffic
while also remaining a lower-cost, reliable option when compared with satellite communications (40).
Although both paraphrases include a reference to the source’s author and a page number, the first focuses
misleadingly on protecting the underwater cables. This paraphrase uses a signal phrase (Sechrist concludes)
that is not an accurate representation of the main point of the passage. Meanwhile, the second paraphrase
uses neutral language and represents the passage’s warning and relevant details accurately.
CREDIT: Sechrist, Michael. “Cyberspace in Deep Water: Protecting the Arteries of the Internet.” The Kennedy School Review, vol. 10, Annual 2010, p. 40.
Questia, www.questia.com/article/1G1-247740041/cyberspace-in-deep-water-protecting-the-arteries.
© 2016 Cengage Learning
Paraphrase thoughtfully and avoid inappropriate uses of paraphrase |
1
[ Paraphrasing Sources ]
Learn It
Integrating source materials into your writing appropriately and ethically is crucial to creating an effective
research project. When you choose to use a source to support a particular point, you must decide whether it
will be most effective to quote, paraphrase, or summarize it. Paraphrasing a source is most useful when you
want to share the ideas or opinions of a source but the exact language of the original is not essential. With a
paraphrase, you preserve important details in your own language, often in about the same number of words
as the original.
As you evaluate the main ideas of the sources you’ve located and weigh their relevance and credibility, you
will also make decisions about how to best use these sources. Integrating paraphrases effectively into your
work can add authority to your point and strengthen an argument you are making.
Following are some key points to keep in mind about paraphrasing a source as you decide whether to
paraphrase, summarize, or quote.
KNOWING WHEN AND HOW TO PARAPHRASE
• Useful for recording key details, a paraphrase allows you to preserve supporting data, information, or facts
and bring them into your own work.
• A paraphrase must be all your own words. Check to be sure you use significantly different word choices
and sentence structures from the original. If you need to include language from the original source, always
enclose it in quotation marks.
• Take care to paraphrase accurately. Do not unintentionally distort the writer’s meaning. Make sure you
record all the key information of a passage, in the order it appears.
• Integrate paraphrases into your work carefully. As with quotations and summaries, paraphrases must be
integrated into your work using a signal phrase that introduces the material and gives some context.
• Cite paraphrases. You must always give credit to the source. Take care when you take notes on a source to
differentiate your ideas from those of your source. Your text must include a citation—identifying the
source and page number of the passage—in order to avoid committing plagiarism.
• Compare your paraphrase to the original to make sure you have not followed the source language too
closely.
© 2016 Cengage Learning
Paraphrase thoughtfully and avoid inappropriate uses of paraphrase |
2
[ Paraphrasing Sources ]
Use It
Read the following excerpt about the history of homesteads from The American Dream: A Short History
of an Idea That Shaped a Nation, by Jim Cullen. Imagine that you are going to use a paraphrase of this
section of Allen’s book to support a point about the early expansion of homesteading in your paper on the
traditional American dream of owning a home. Try phrasing the main idea of this passage as a question.
Then answer the question in your own words. Make your paraphrase sound like your voice rather than the
original writer’s voice. Be sure to credit the source.
Unfortunately, the original Homestead Act and its successors never lived up to their original
promise. Blacks and whites alike had trouble acquiring the knowledge, materials, and capital necessary
to farm even land that was given away free, and speculators gobbled up much of it. Moreover, much of
the American West, particularly as one crossed into arid, grassy Great Plains—known for much of the
nineteenth century as “the Great American Desert”—was not really suited to farming, and not even
measures like the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909, which offered larger tracts to settlers willing
irrigate it, made it attractive. Ironically, the cavernous spaces of virtually uninhabitable land led many
westerners to congregate in cities and towns; as early as 1880 the West was the most urbanized region
of the country.
—Jim Cullen, The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation,
Oxford UP, 2003, p. 142
Next, reread your paraphrase and make a list of how it presents the details in the original passage. Imagine
that you decided to quote from the passage instead. What effect would you achieve?
CREDIT: Cullen, Jim. The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation . Oxford UP, 2003, p. 140. Questia, www.questia.com/
library/103185890/the-american-dream-a-short-history-of-an-idea-that.
© 2016 Cengage Learning
Paraphrase thoughtfully and avoid inappropriate uses of paraphrase |
3