How to Paraphrase, Summarize, and Quote

Paraphrasing, summarizing, and quoting are crucial skills in giving credit in your academic writing. Being able to cite the work of others is crucial in academia and when writing your research paper. It shows your familiarity with the work in your field of research.

Also, it proves a certain level of competence as a scholar. However, there are strict rules to follow when using the work of others. This would prevent academic malpractice.

Summarizing refers to giving concise and accurate descriptions of the work of others that you rely on in your essay or article. Paraphrasing means expressing others' ideas in your own words. Lastly, Quoting means taking words directly from the source material and enclosing them in quotation marks.

Academic writing places great importance on reading closely, assimilating others' work, and giving credit to authors in your own writing. Summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting well demonstrates that you have the skill to do all three of those things.

Giving credit involves a process of using proper citation and referencing format, which any scholar has to spend much time learning and practicing. In this article, we explain:

1. The importance of giving credit in your work

2. The difference between quoting and paraphrasing

3. The detailed rules of proper quotation

4. How to paraphrase in your research writing properly

Read on to learn more. 

The importance of giving credit

Paraphrasing and quoting others' work is important to make sure that you give credit where it's due. After all, good researchers are supposed to build on each other's work. They're not supposed to steal or take credit for it.

Properly quoting is absolutely necessary to prevent charges of plagiarism, which is one of the worst things you can be accused of in the academic world. As a matter of fact, in the world of academics, plagiarism is taken so seriously, you're not even allowed to quote yourself without giving credit to the source!

However, quoting too often can give the impression that you have not properly digested what you have read. Instead of excessive quoting, you should learn how to read and properly digest what you have read and express it in your own words.

The term for this is paraphrasing. Even if you use your own words in paraphrasing, you still are expected to credit the original author or authors. When writing, you should employ a judicious mix of quoting and paraphrasing.

The various style guides, such as MLA, APA, and CMoS, include specific rules to follow for proper quote citation and paraphrasing. This is especially important in your Literature Review and Introduction sections, where most of the citations occur. 

In this article, we focus primarily on the APA. Why? They appear to have the most comprehensive and exhaustive set of rules for citing quotes.

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Skill	Attribute	Purpose
Paraphrasing	Expressing someone else's idea in your own words.	It demonstrates your ability to assimilate information and express it in your own words without losing the original meaning.
Summarizing	Giving a concise and accurate description of somebody else's work	It demonstrates the ability to briefly describe others' work objectively.
Quoting	Directly taking source material and embedding it in your writing using quotation marks ("").	It demonstrates your ability to incorporate source material skillfully into your own work.

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Quoting versus paraphrasing

What is the difference between quoting and paraphrasing? Well, quoting means taking material directly from an author. With direct quotes, double quotation marks should always be used to show where the quotation begins and where it ends. Paraphrasing refers to stating someone's idea or ideas in your own words.

Direct quoting

When quoting, quotation marks ("") should be used to envelop the quote for short quotes (i.e., quotes that are less than forty words). For lengthy quotes, block quotations should be used. This involves setting the quoted text apart from the surrounding text using indentation. When quoting, the following rules should be followed:

• Reproduce exactly word for word the content that has been taken from someone else's work,

• Even your own previous work should be quoted

• Always provide the year, author, and page number

Example of direct quoting

Here is an example of a few words being quoted:

Interpreting these results, Simson et al. (2006) suggested that the “participants in Group A may have been affected by their previous knowledge or familarity with the text” (p. 621), thus resuling in them giving biased answers.

If a quotation is lengthy, that is, 40 words or more, set the quote apart from the surrounding text using a block quote:

Others have contradicted this view:

For other variables such as farm size, crop type, and economic situation, results similarly vary. Buttel and Gillespie (1988) as well as McCann et al. (1997) suggested that wealthier farmers with larger and more diversified farms adopt organic farming more frequently than less wealthy and smaller farmers. On the other hand, Anderson (1990) reveals that smaller farmers who are not economically well off have a greater willingness to switch to organic farming. However, Duff et al. (1991) discovered no relationship between any of these variables. 

Incorporating changes in quoted text. Sometimes, it is necessary to make changes to a direct quote. This could be to add your own emphasis, to leave out material, and to add your words or grammatical corrections. To do so square brackets should be used:

To add your own emphasis, use italics for the material you wish to stress. Plus, include square brackets to note that it is your own emphasis: [emphasis added].

“They are studying the extent to which extent to which organic farming certification is a luxury [emphasis added] that only relatively wealthy farmers can afford . . .” (Antoine, 2021, p. 45).

To insert extraneous material, use italics.

“They are studying the extent to which organic farming certification is a luxury that only relatively wealthy [and educated] farmers could afford . . .” (Henig, 2008, p. 40).

Prioritize paraphrasing over quoting

Extensive quotations shouldn't be a major part of a scientific report or paper. For studies that include interviews of participants, lengthy quotations from interviewees might be included. However, to reference other people's work, you should use paraphrasing.

Paraphrasing is an important skill in academic writing. Much of your writing will be based on the stuff that you have read. This is especially true in your introduction and literature review. If the knowledge being expressed is common knowledge, then there is no need to credit sources.

However, if you are providing specific details or information from a particular author, then crediting your sources is absolutely necessary.

Paraphrasing should be stressed over direct quotations should be few and far between. Moreover, sprinkling direct quotes too liberally throughout the text could give the impression that you have not read or digested your sources sufficiently.

How to paraphrase

The process of paraphrasing begins with carefully reading and understanding the source material. Your understanding and reading of the text should be complete enough to enable you to rewrite the author's idea without looking at the original text. Here are some tips to follow when paraphrasing:

• Keep the original meaning

• Use synonyms where necessary without leaving out keywords or special technical terms essential to the subject matter

• Try if possible to change the order in which ideas are presented

• Change the structure or grammatic pattern of the sentence or sentences

• Write out the original idea without looking at the source text

The difference between paraphrasing and summarizing

Paraphrasing differs from summarizing. A summary refers to a shortened overview of someone else's text. It is an essential skill and provides you with the opportunity to show how well you understand a paper, a section of a paper, or the ideas of a paper using an economy of words.

You can best use your summarizing skills to write a literature review, to take notes, and to write abstracts. An abstract, in particular, can serve as a good example of what it takes to write a proper summary. It is a whole paper often reduced to 250 words.

In short, paraphrasing refers to rewriting other authors' individual ideas in your own words, whereas summarizing refers to condensing the main points of whole studies, paper sections, and other lengthy texts in a brief overview.

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Final thoughts on properly giving credit

Proper paraphrasing and quoting in your research are essential. It helps protect you against charges of plagiarism, one of the most severe charges one can make against an author. Moreover, quoting large amounts of text is impractical and unwieldy.

Learning how to properly digest source material and rephrasing it in your own words is the more correct strategy to employ through paraphrasing. Skills like paraphrasing and summarizing demonstrate that you know how to read, digest, and present information without injecting your own bias.

Academic writing is about synthesizing new knowledge, understanding, or insights. However, before you get to that point, you need to learn how to properly present and give credit to the work of others.

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References

American Psychological Association, A. (2013). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition. APA.

Day, R. A. (2022). How to write and publish a scientific paper. ABC-CLIO.

The University of Chicago. (2017). The Chicago Manual of Style, Seventeenth Edition. University of Chicago Press.

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Cite this EminentEdit article

Antoine, M. (2024, August 16). How to Paraphrase, Summarize, and Quote. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/how-to-paraphrase