paraphrasing quotation plagiarism

• Military & Veterans
• Transfer Students
• Education Partnerships
• COVID-19 Info
• 844-PURDUE-G
• Student Login
• Request Info
• Bachelor of Science
• Master of Science
• Associate of Applied Science
• Graduate Certificate
• Master of Business Administration
• ExcelTrack Master of Business Administration
• ExcelTrack Bachelor of Science
• Postbaccalaureate Certificate
• Certificate
• Associate of Applied Science (For Military Students)
• Programs and Courses
• Master of Public Administration
• Doctor of Education
• Postgraduate Certificate
• Bachelor of Science in Psychology
• Master of Health Care Administration
• Master of Health Informatics
• Doctor of Health Science
• Associate of Applied of Science (For Military Students)
• Associate of Science (For Military Students)
• Master of Public Health
• Executive Juris Doctor
• Juris Doctor
• Dual Master's Degrees
• ExcelTrack Master of Science
• Master of Science (DNP Path)
• Bachelor of Science (RN-to-BSN)
• ExcelTrack Bachelor of Science (RN-to-BSN)
• Associate of Science
• Doctor of Nursing Practice
• Master of Professional Studies

The average Purdue Global military student is awarded 54% of the credits needed for an associate's and 45% of the credits needed for a bachelor's.

• General Education Mobile (GEM) Program
• AAS in Health Science
• AS in Health Science
• BS in Organizational Management
• BS in Professional Studies
• AAS in Criminal Justice
• AAS in Small Group Management
• AAS Small Group Management
• Master's Degrees
• Bachelor's Degrees
• Associate's Degrees
• Certificate Programs
• Noncredit Courses
• Tuition and Financial Aid Overview
• Financial Aid Process
• Financial Aid Awards
• Financial Aid Resources
• Financial Aid Frequently Asked Questions
• Financial Aid Information Guide
• Tuition and Savings
• Aviation Degree Tuition and Fees
• Professional Studies Tuition and Fees
• Single Courses and Micro-Credentials
• Time and Tuition Calculator
• Net Price Calculator
• Military Benefits and Tuition Assistance
• Military Educational Resources
• Military Tuition Reductions
• Military Spouses
• Student Loans
• Student Grants
• Outside Scholarships
• Loan Management
• Financial Literacy Tools
• Academic Calendar
• General Requirements
• Technology Requirements
• Work and Life Experience Credit
• DREAMers Education Initiative
• Student Identity
• Student Experience
• Online Experience
• Student Life
• Alumni Engagement
• International Students
• Academic Support
• All Purdue Online Degrees
• Career Services
• COVID-19 FAQs
• Student Accessibility Services
• Student Resources
• Transcript Request
• About Purdue Global
• Accreditation
• Approach to Learning
• Career Opportunities
• Diversity Initiatives
• Purdue Global Commitment
• Cybersecurity Center
• Chancellor's Corner
• Purdue Global Moves
• Leadership and Board
• Facts and Statistics
• Researcher Request Intake Form

Most Commonly Searched:

• All Degree Programs
• Communication
• Criminal Justice
• Fire Science
• Health Sciences
• Human Services
• Information Technology
• Legal Studies
• Professional Studies
• Psychology and ABA
• Public Policy
• Military and Veterans
• Tuition and Fee Finder
• Financial Aid FAQs
• Military Benefits and Aid
• Admissions Overview
• Student Experience Overview
• Academic Support Overview
• Online Learning

A Guide to Plagiarism and Paraphrasing

According to the joint research efforts of Dr. Donald McCabe and the International Center for Academic Integrity , nearly 30% of university students admit to having cheated in some way on an exam.

Understanding how and when to cite sources is a critical skill for students to learn. Whether you borrow someone’s ideas from a textbook, blog post, or academic journal, you must give proper credit while representing the source’s ideas fairly and coherently.

This guide covers:

• Paraphrasing
• Plagiarism checkers, citation managers, and writing tools

The Purdue Global Writing Center defines plagiarism as “using another's words, ideas, results, or images without giving appropriate credit to that person, therefore, giving the impression that it is your own work.”

Types of Plagiarism

University of Oxford notes eight common forms of plagiarism:

• Verbatim plagiarism: Copying someone else’s work word for word.
• Cutting and pasting from web pages without clear acknowledgement: Pulling information off the internet without referencing it and without including it in the bibliography.
• Paraphrasing: Paraphrasing so closely so that the copy is almost an exact match to the original.
• Collusion: In group projects, or projects in which you received help, failing to properly attribute the assistance or failure to follow the project’s rules.
• Inaccurate citation: Failing to cite correctly, according to the conventions of your discipline.
• Failure to acknowledge assistance: Failing to clearly acknowledge all assistance that has contributed to your work (ordinary proofreading and help from a tutor or supervisor is excepted).
• Use of material written by professional agencies or other people: Using material that was written by a professional agency or another person, even if you have the consent of the person who wrote it.
• Auto-plagiarism (also known as self-plagiarism): Reusing work that you’ve previously submitted or published; presenting that information as new when you’ve already gotten credit for the work.

A new concern revolves around AI and copying directly from chat, composition, and visual tools. Using prompts to generate content for assignments and passing it off as your own contribution is considered plagiarism. Various organizations use AI software to check for submissions generated by a chatbot.

Also, keep in mind that AI tools may produce inaccurate and unreliable information. While there may be valid use cases for informal AI-generated brainstorming, this is a complex and evolving topic. Be sure to verify the policy expressed by your school, professors, or professional organizations for recent developments.

It’s important to note that plagiarism can be intentional or unintentional. Unintentional plagiarism occurs when a student unknowingly cites a source inaccurately or improperly. Intentional plagiarism, on the other hand, is when a student chooses not to cite a source or tries to pass off someone else’s ideas as their own.

Consequences of Plagiarism

The consequences of plagiarism vary by institution, but it could get you expelled or dropped from a course. In less severe instances, plagiarism — both intentional and unintentional — may result in a grade penalty, course failure, or suspension. Beyond the academic consequences, plagiarism also tarnishes your reputation and minimizes your integrity. Whether you’re in school or the working world, plagiarism is not a good look.

How to Avoid Plagiarism

The key to avoiding plagiarism is learning how to incorporate research into your writing. According to the Purdue Global Writing Center , you can do this in the following ways:

• Quoting: If you don’t want to alter a source, use quotation marks to enclose all verbatim phrases.
• Summarizing: If you find multiple relevant points in a lengthy text, simplify them into your own condensed synopsis.
• Paraphrasing: If you want to use a source’s information, restate it in your own words.

Whether you’re quoting, summarizing, or paraphrasing, don’t forget to cite all sources.

What Is Paraphrasing?

Paraphrasing is using your own words to convey the meaning of an excerpt. It shows your reader that you did your research and understand the content. While students may understand that they need to cite sources, many struggle with paraphrasing the ideas of others into their own words. However, like many aspects of writing, effective paraphrasing is a skill developed over time.

How to Approach Paraphrasing

The goal of paraphrasing is to translate the original work into your own wording and sentence structure. The best way to approach this is to focus on the meaning of the text, forcing you to interact with its purpose and context.

Paraphrasing Tips

A good way to judge your understanding of material is to see if you can explain it to someone else. Once you have this level of understanding, it’s easier to create effective paraphrases — changing the language and structure of a passage becomes more manageable.

Here are some tips to help you paraphrase:

• Reread the passage until you fully understand its meaning.
• Write your own summary of the passage without referencing the original.
• Check that your summary accurately captures the context of the original passage.
• Document the source information following your summary, whether it’s an endnote or footnote.

Remember that you still need to cite your paraphrases, but your follow-up analysis and discussion points belong to you.

What Requires Citation?

Any time you use information that isn’t common knowledge or you didn’t come up with yourself, you must cite it. The following requires citation, usually through in-text citation or a reference list entry:

• Quotes: If you are quoting the actual words someone said, put the words in quotation marks and cite the source.
• Information and ideas: If you obtain ideas or information from somewhere else, cite it — even if you paraphrase the original content.
• Illustrations: If you use someone else’s graphic, table, figure, or artwork, you must credit the source. These may also require permission and a copyright notice.
• Photographs: If you use your own photography or an image that allows use without attribution, no citation is required. In other cases, add a note below the image and a corresponding reference citation.

Common Knowledge Exception

You don’t need to cite information that’s considered common knowledge in the public domain — as long as you reword the well-known fact. According to the Purdue Global Writing Center , information must have the following traits to be considered common knowledge:

• The reader would already be aware of it.
• It’s a widely accepted fact; for example, there are 24 hours in a day.
• It’s accessible via common information sources.
• It originates from folklore or a well-known story.
• It’s commonly acknowledged in your field and known by your audience.

Why Citation Is Important

The importance of citation goes beyond the avoidance of plagiarism. According to the Purdue Global Writing Center’s Plagiarism Information page, citation:

• Distinguishes new ideas from existing information
• Reinforces arguments regarding a particular topic
• Allows readers to find your sources and conduct additional research
• Maintains ethical research and writing
• Ensures attribution of ideas, avoiding plagiarism

Additionally, proper citation enhances your credibility with readers, displays your critical thinking skills, and demonstrates your strong writing ability.

Plagiarism Prevention and Writing Resources

It takes time to develop strong writing and paraphrasing skills. Thinking of writing as more of a discussion than a report may help you develop your skills. Remember that it’s not about reporting and repeating information; it’s about expanding on ideas and making them your own.

Below are some tools to help you avoid plagiarism, accurately cite sources, and improve your writing as you develop your own unique voice.

Plagiarism Checkers

• DupliChecker
• Grammarly's Plagiarism Checker
• Plagiarism Detector

Citation Managers

• Academic Writer
• Grammarly’s Free Citation Generator

>> Read: Apps and Extensions to Help You With APA Citations

Writing Tools

Check out purdue global’s writing center resources.

The Purdue Global Writing Center can help guide students through the paper writing process — from avoiding plagiarism to proper paraphrasing to getting the right citations.

Students may access this resource from the Purdue Global campus homepage . Click “My Studies,” followed by “Academic Success Center.”

From there, students have several options:

• Ask a writing tutor
• Connect with a tutor for a one-on-one session
• Browse the Study Studio
• Watch webinars

Students can check out the Using Sources & APA Style page , which includes several resources to guide students through the process of formatting a document and citing sources in the American Psychological Association (APA) style. The Plagiarism Information page offers a tutorial designed to help students identify instances of plagiarism and understand how to avoid them.

See Notes and Conditions below for important information.

About the Author

Purdue Global

Earn a degree you're proud of and employers respect at Purdue Global, Purdue's online university for working adults. Accredited and online, Purdue Global gives you the flexibility and support you need to come back and move your career forward. Choose from 175+ programs, all backed by the power of Purdue.

• General Education
• Legal Studies & Public Policy

Your Path to Success Begins Here

Learn more about online programs at Purdue Global and download our program guide.

Connect with an Advisor to explore program requirements, curriculum, credit for prior learning process, and financial aid options.

Third-Party Products and Services: Links from the Purdue Global website to third-party sites do not constitute an endorsement by Purdue Global of the parties or their products and services. Purdue Global cannot guarantee that certain products will continue to be offered by their publishers for free. Users of third-party websites are responsible for reviewing the terms of use and being familiar with the privacy policy of such third-party websites.

Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Avoiding Plagiarism

Steven D. Krause

Learning Objectives

• Summarize, quote, and paraphrase accurately from readings.
• Smoothly incorporate summary, paraphrase, and quotations in your writing.
• Understand when summary, quotation, or paraphrase are appropriate in a research paper.
• Avoid plagiarism.

Learning how to effectively quote and paraphrase research can be difficult and it certainly takes practice.  Hopefully, your abilities to make good use of your research will improve as you work through the exercises in part two and three ofThe Process of Research Writing, not to mention as you take on other research writing experiences beyond this class.  The goal of this chapter is to introduce some basic strategies for summarizing, quoting and paraphrasing research in your writing and to explain how to avoid plagiarizing your research.

How to Summarize:  An Overview

A summary is a brief explanation of a longer text.  Some summaries, such as the ones that accompany annotated bibliographies, are very short, just a sentence or two.  Others are much longer, though summaries are always much shorter than the text being summarized in the first place.

Summaries of different lengths are useful in research writing because you often need to provide your readers with an explanation of the text you are discussing.  This is especially true when you are going to quote or paraphrase from a source.

Of course, the first step in writing a good summary is to do a thorough reading of the text you are going to summarize in the first place.  Beyond that important start, there are a few basic guidelines you should follow when you write summary material:

• Stay “neutral” in your summarizing.  Summaries provide “just the facts” and are not the place where you offer your opinions about the text you are summarizing.  Save your opinions and evaluation of the evidence you are summarizing for other parts of your writing.
• Don’t quote from what you are summarizing.  Summaries will be more useful to you and your colleagues if you write them in your own words.
• Don’t “cut and paste” from database abstracts.  Many of the periodical indexes that are available as part of your library’s computer system include abstracts of articles.  Do no “cut” this abstract material and then “paste” it into your own annotated bibliography.  For one thing, this is plagiarism.  Second, “cutting and pasting” from the abstract defeats one of the purposes of writing summaries and creating an annotated bibliography in the first place, which is to help you understand and explain your research.

How to Quote and Paraphrase:  An Overview

Writers quote and paraphrase from research in order to support their points and to persuade their readers.  A quote or a paraphrase from a piece of evidence in support of a point answers the reader’s question, “says who?”

This is especially true in academic writing since scholarly readers are most persuaded by effective research and evidence.  For example, readers of an article about a new cancer medication published in a medical journal will be most interested in the scholar’s research and statistics that demonstrate the effectiveness of the treatment.  Conversely, they will not be as persuaded by emotional stories from individual patients about how a new cancer medication improved the quality of their lives.  While this appeal to emotion can be effective and is common in popular sources, these individual anecdotes do not carry the same sort of “scholarly” or scientific value as well-reasoned research and evidence.

Of course, your instructor is not expecting you to be an expert on the topic of your research paper.  While you might conduct some primary research, it’s a good bet that you’ll be relying on secondary sources such as books, articles, and Web sites to inform and persuade your readers.  You’ll present this research to your readers in the form of quotes and paraphrases.  

  A “quote” is a direct restatement of the exact words from the original source.  The general rule of thumb is any time you use three or more words as they appeared in the original source, you should treat it as a quote.  A “paraphrase” is a restatement of the information or point of the original source in your own words.  

While quotes and paraphrases are different and should be used in different ways in your research writing (as the examples in this section suggest), they do have a number of things in common.  Both quotes and paraphrases should:

•  be “introduced” to the reader, particularly the first time you mention a source;      
• include an explanation of the evidence which explains to the reader why you think the evidence is important, especially if it is not apparent from the context of the quote or paraphrase; and
• include a proper citation of the source.

The method you should follow to properly quote or paraphrase depends on the style guide you are following in your academic writing.  The two most common style guides used in academic writing are the Modern Language Association (MLA), and the American Psychological Association (APA).  Your instructor will probably assign one of these styles before you begin working on your project, however, if he/she doesn’t mention this, be sure to ask.

When to Quote, When to Paraphrase

The real “art” to research writing is using quotes and paraphrases from evidence effectively in order to support your point.  There are certain “rules,” dictated by the rules of style you are following, such as the ones presented by the MLA or the ones presented by the APA.  There are certain “guidelines” and suggestions, like the ones I offer in the previous section and the ones you will learn from your teacher and colleagues.  

But when all is said and done, the question of when to quote and when to paraphrase depends a great deal on the specific context of the writing and the effect you are trying to achieve.  Learning the best times to quote and paraphrase takes practice and experience.

In general, it is best to use a quote when:

• The exact words of your source are important for the point you are trying to make.  This is especially true if you are quoting technical language, terms, or very specific word choices.
• You want to highlight your agreement with the author’s words.  If you agree with the point the author of the evidence makes and you like their exact words, use them as a quote.  
• You want to highlight your disagreement with the author’s words.  In other words, you may sometimes want to use a direct quote to indicate exactly what it is you disagree about.  This might be particularly true when you are considering the antithetical positions in your research writing projects.

In general, it is best to paraphrase when:

• There is no good reason to use a quote to refer to your evidence.  If the author’s exact words are not especially important to the point you are trying to make, you are usually better off paraphrasing the evidence.
• You are trying to explain a particular a piece of evidence in order to explain or interpret it in more detail.  This might be particularly true in writing projects like critiques.
• You need to balance a direct quote in your writing.  You need to be careful about directly quoting your research too much because it can sometimes make for awkward and difficult to read prose.  So, one of the reasons to use a paraphrase instead of a quote is to create balance within your writing.

Tips for Quoting and Paraphrasing

• Introduce your quotes and paraphrases to your reader, especially on first reference.
• Explain the significance of the quote or paraphrase to your reader.
• Cite your quote or paraphrase properly according to the rules of style you are following in your essay.
• Quote when the exact words are important, when you want to highlight your agreement or your disagreement.
• Paraphrase when the exact words aren’t important, when you want to explain the point of your evidence, or when you need to balance the direct quotes in your writing.

Four Examples of Quotes and Paraphrases

Here are four examples of what I mean about properly quoting and paraphrasing evidence in your research essays.  In each case, I begin with a BAD example, or the way NOT to quote or paraphrase.

Quoting in MLA Style

Here’s the first BAD example, where the writer is trying to follow the rules of MLA style:  

There are many positive effects for advertising prescription drugs on television.  “African-American physicians regard direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription medicines as one way to educate minority patients about needed treatment and healthcare options” (Wechsler, Internet).

This is a potentially good piece of information to support a research writer’s claim, but the researcher hasn’t done any of the necessary work to explain where this quote comes from or to explain why it is important for supporting her point.  Rather, she has simply “dropped in” the quote, leaving the interpretation of its significance up to the reader.

Now consider this revised GOOD (or at least BETTER) example of how this quote might be better introduced into the essay:

In her Pharmaceutical Executive article available through the Wilson Select Internet database, Jill Wechsler writes about one of the positive effects of advertising prescription drugs on television.  “African-American physicians regard direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription medicines as one way to educate minority patients about needed treatment and healthcare options.”

In this revision, it’s much more clear what point the writer is trying to make with this evidence and where this evidence comes from.  

In this particular example, the passage is from a traditional print journal called Pharmaceutical Executive .  However, the writer needs to indicate that she actually found and read this article through Wilson Select, an Internet database which reproduces the “full text” of articles from periodicals without any graphics, charts, or page numbers.  

When you use a direct quote in your research, you need to the indicate page number of that direct quote or you need to indicate that the evidence has no specific page numbers. While it can be a bit awkward to indicate within the text how the writer found this information if it’s from the Internet, it’s important to do so on the first reference of a piece of evidence in your writing.  On references to this piece of evidence after the first reference, you can use just the last name of the writer.  For example:

Wechsler also reports on the positive effects of advertising prescription drugs on television.  She writes…

Paraphrasing in MLA Style

In this example, the writer is using MLA style to write a research essay for a Literature class.  Here is a BAD example of a paraphrase:

While Gatsby is deeply in love with Daisy in The Great Gatsby, his love for her is indistinguishable from his love of his possessions (Callahan).

There are two problems with this paraphrase.  First, if this is the first or only reference to this particular piece of evidence in the research essay, the writer should include more information about the source of this paraphrase in order to properly introduce it.  Second, this paraphrase is actually not of the entire article but rather of a specific passage.  The writer has neglected to note the page number within the parenthetical citation.

A GOOD or at least BETTER revision of this paraphrase might look like this:

John F. Callahan suggests in his article “F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Evolving American Dream” that while Gatsby is deeply in love with Daisy in The Great Gatsby, his love for her is indistinguishable from his love of his possessions (381).

By incorporating the name of the author of the evidence the research writer is referring to here, the source of this paraphrase is now clear to the reader.  Furthermore, because there is a page number at the end of this sentence, the reader understands that this passage is a paraphrase of a particular part of Callahan’s essay and not a summary of the entire essay. Again, if the research writer had introduced this source to his readers earlier, he could have started with a phrase like “Callahan suggests…” and then continued on with his paraphrase.

If the research writer were offering a brief summary of the entire essay following MLA style, he wouldn’t include a page number in parentheses.  For example:

John F. Callahan’s article “F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Evolving American Dream” examines Fitzgerald’s fascination with the elusiveness of the American Dream in the novels The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night, and The Last Tycoon.

Quoting in APA Style

Consider this BAD example in APA style, of what NOT to do when quoting evidence:

“If the U.S. scallop fishery were a business, its management would surely be fired, because its revenues could readily be increased by at least 50 percent while its costs were being reduced by an equal percentage.” (Repetto, 2001, p. 84).

Again, this is a potentially valuable piece of evidence, but it simply isn’t clear what point the research writer is trying to make with it.  Further, it doesn’t follow the preferred method of citation with APA style.

Here is a revision that is a GOOD or at least BETTER example:

Repetto (2001) concludes that in the case of the scallop industry, those running the industry should be held responsible for not considering methods that would curtail the problems of over-fishing.   “If the U.S. scallop fishery were a business, its management would surely be fired, because its revenues could readily be increased by at least 50 percent while its costs were being reduced by an equal percentage” (p. 84).

This revision is improved because the research writer has introduced and explained the point of the evidence with the addition of a clarifying sentence.  It also follows the rules of APA style.  Generally, APA style prefers that the research writer refer to the author only by last name followed immediately by the year of publication.  Whenever possible, you should begin your citation with the author’s last name and the year of publication, and, in the case of a direct quote like this passage, the page number (including the “p.”) in parentheses at the end.

Paraphrasing in APA Style

Paraphrasing in APA style is slightly different from MLA style as well.  Consider first this BAD example of what NOT to do in paraphrasing from a source in APA style:

Computer criminals have lots of ways to get away with credit card fraud (Cameron, 2002).

The main problem with this paraphrase is there isn’t enough here to adequately explain to the reader what the point of the evidence really is.  Remember:  your readers have no way of automatically knowing why you as a research writer think that a particular piece of evidence is useful in supporting your point.  This is why it is key that you introduce and explain your evidence.

Here is a revision that is GOOD or at least BETTER:

Cameron (2002) points out that computer criminals intent on committing credit card fraud are able to take advantage of the fact that there aren’t enough officials working to enforce computer crimes.  Criminals are also able to use the technology to their advantage by communicating via email and chat rooms with other criminals.

Again, this revision is better because the additional information introduces and explains the point of the evidence.  In this particular example, the author’s name is also incorporated into the explanation of the evidence as well.  In APA, it is preferable to weave in the author’s name into your essay, usually at the beginning of a sentence.  However, it would also have been acceptable to end an improved paraphrase with just the author’s last name and the date of publication in parentheses.

How to Avoid Plagiarism in the Research Process

Plagiarism is the unauthorized or uncredited use of the writings or ideas of another in your writing.  While it might not be as tangible as auto theft or burglary, plagiarism is still a form of theft.  

In the academic world, plagiarism is a serious matter because ideas in the forms of research, creative work, and original thought are highly valued.  Chances are, your school has strict rules about what happens when someone is caught plagiarizing.  The penalty for plagiarism is severe, everything from a failing grade for the plagiarized work, a failing grade for the class, or expulsion from the institution.  

You might not be aware that plagiarism can take several different forms.  The most well known, purposeful plagiarism , is handing in an essay written by someone else and representing it as your own, copying your essay word for word from a magazine or journal, or downloading an essay from the Internet.  

A much more common and less understood phenomenon is what I call accidental plagiarism.  Accidental plagiarism is the result of improperly paraphrasing, summarizing, quoting, or citing your evidence in your academic writing.  Generally, writers accidentally plagiarize because they simply don’t know or they fail to follow the rules for giving credit to the ideas of others in their writing.

Both purposeful and accidental plagiarism are wrong, against the rules, and can result in harsh punishments.  Ignoring or not knowing the rules of how to not plagiarize and properly cite evidence might be an explanation, but it is not anexcuse.

To exemplify what I’m getting at, consider the examples below that use quotations and paraphrases from this brief passage:

Those who denounce cyberculture today strangely resemble those who criticized rock music during the fifties and sixties.  Rock started out as an Anglo-American phenomenon and has become an industry.  Nonetheless, it was able to capture the hopes of young people around the world and provided enjoyment to those of us who listened to or played rock.  Sixties pop was the conscience of one or two generations that helped bring the war in Vietnam to a close.  Obviously, neither rock nor pop has solved global poverty or hunger.  But is this a reason to be “against” them? (ix).

And just to make it clear that I’m not plagiarizing this passage, here is the citation in MLA style:

Works Cited

Lévy, Pierre.   Cyberculture .  Trans. Robert Bononno.  Minneapolis:  U of Minnesota P, 2001.

Here’s an obvious example of plagiarism:

Those who denounce cyberculture today strangely resemble those who criticized rock music during the fifties and sixties.  

In this case, the writer has literally taken one of Lévy’s sentences and represented it as her own.  That’s clearly against the rules.

Here’s another example of plagiarism, perhaps less obvious:

The same kind of people who criticize cyberculture are the same kind of people who criticized rock and roll music back in the fifties and sixties.  But both cyberculture and rock music inspire and entertain young people.

While these aren’t Lévy’s exact words, they are certainly close enough to constitute a form of plagiarism.  And again, even though you might think that this is a “lesser” form of plagiarism, it’s still plagiarism.  

Both of these passages can easily be corrected to make them acceptable quotations or paraphrases.  

In the introduction of his book Cyberculture, Pierre Lévy observes that “Those who denounce cyberculture today strangely resemble those who criticized rock music during the fifties and sixties” (ix). Pierre Lévy suggests that the same kind of people who criticize cyberculture are the same kind of people who criticized rock and roll music back in the fifties and sixties.  But both cyberculture and rock music inspire and entertain young people (ix).

Note that changing these passages from examples of plagiarism to acceptable examples of a quotation and a paraphrase is extremely easy:  properly cite your sources.

This leads to the “golden rule” of avoiding plagiarism:

The Golden Rule of Avoiding Plagiarism

Always cite your sources.  If you are unsure as to whether you should or should not cite a particular claim or reference, you should probably cite your source.

Often, students are unclear as to whether or not they need to cite a piece of evidence because they believe it to be “common knowledge” or because they are not sure about the source of information.  When in doubt about whether or not to cite evidence in order to give credit to a source (“common knowledge” or not), you should cite the evidence.

Plagiarism and the Internet

Sometimes, I think the ease of finding and retrieving information on the World Wide Web makes readers think that this information does not need to be cited.  After all, it isn’t a traditional source like a book or a journal; it is available for “free.”  All a research writer needs to do with a web site is “cut and paste” whatever he needs into his essay, right?  Wrong!  

You need to cite the evidence you find from the Internet or the World Wide Web the same way you cite evidence from other sources.  To not do this is plagiarism, or, more bluntly, cheating.  Just because the information is “freely” available on the Internet does not mean you can use this information in your academic writing without properly citing it, much in the same way that the information from library journals and books “freely” available to you needs to be cited in order to give credit where credit is due.

It is also not acceptable to simply download graphics from the World Wide Web.  Images found on the Internet are protected by copyright laws.  Quite literally, taking images from the Web (particularly from commercial sources) is an offense that could lead to legal action.  There are places where you can find graphics and clip art that Web publishers have made publicly available for anyone to use, but be sure that the Web site where you find the graphics makes this explicit before you take graphics as your own.

In short, you can use evidence from the Web as long as you don’t plagiarize and as long as you properly cite it; don’t take graphics from the Web unless you know the images are in the public domain.  

This piece was originally Chapter 3 from The Process of Research Writing .

Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Avoiding Plagiarism Copyright © 2016 by Steven D. Krause is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

Feedback/errata.

Comments are closed.

Quotations vs. Paraphrasing

• Common Knowledge
• Self-Plagiarism
• UTM Writing Center Located in Humanities 209 with evening hours in the library, the Writing Center is an incredible resource for help with plagiarism, citations, direct quotations, paraphrasing, peer review, and all your writing questions. (731) 881-7277 [email protected]
• Purdue OWL The Online Writing Lab from Purdue is a fantastic resource for how-to information on citations with lots of examples.
• Paul Meek Library While the Writing Center is the premier citation and plagiarism resource on campus, the library can also help! Chat or email us for any questions about what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. [email protected]

Quick Links

• How to Find...
• Reference and Research Support Services
• Interlibrary Loan (ILL)
• Regional Centers, Online Programs, and Dual Enrollment
• Library Policies
• Paul Meek Library Assessment Initiative
• Quoting and Paraphrasing (Alden, 2018) Check out this amazing Powerpoint by Dr. Kelle Alden, the Writing Center Director here at UTM. Dr. Alden gives examples on when to quote, when to paraphrase, the difference between the two, and how to do both effectively.

Remember that paraphrasing can really help you make your arguments in your paper, and in general you should use direct quotations sparingly.

To paraphrase well:

• You should capture the essence of the argument, but it should be in your own words 
• Rewrite sentences and sentence structure, don't just use a thesaurus to replace some words
• Read the passage you are going to paraphrase, then look away for 10 seconds and think about something else. Then, without looking back at the original, write down what the passage conveys.

No matter if you quote or paraphrase, remember to cite the sources you used.

• << Previous: Plagiarism
• Next: Common Knowledge >>
• Last Updated: May 10, 2022 2:55 PM
• URL: https://libguides.utm.edu/plagiarism

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Paraphrase: Write It in Your Own Words

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

Paraphrasing is one way to use a text in your own writing without directly quoting source material. Anytime you are taking information from a source that is not your own, you need to specify where you got that information.

A paraphrase is...

• Your own rendition of essential information and ideas expressed by someone else, presented in a new form.
• One legitimate way (when accompanied by accurate documentation) to borrow from a source.
• A more detailed restatement than a summary, which focuses concisely on a single main idea.

Paraphrasing is a valuable skill because...

• It is better than quoting information from an undistinguished passage.
• It helps you control the temptation to quote too much.
• The mental process required for successful paraphrasing helps you to grasp the full meaning of the original.

6 Steps to Effective Paraphrasing

• Reread the original passage until you understand its full meaning.
• Set the original aside, and write your paraphrase on a note card.
• Jot down a few words below your paraphrase to remind you later how you envision using this material. At the top of the note card, write a key word or phrase to indicate the subject of your paraphrase.
• Check your rendition with the original to make sure that your version accurately expresses all the essential information in a new form.
• Use quotation marks to identify any unique term or phraseology you have borrowed exactly from the source.
• Record the source (including the page) on your note card so that you can credit it easily if you decide to incorporate the material into your paper.

Some examples to compare

Note that the examples in this section use MLA style for in-text citation.

The original passage:

Students frequently overuse direct quotation in taking notes, and as a result they overuse quotations in the final [research] paper. Probably only about 10% of your final manuscript should appear as directly quoted matter. Therefore, you should strive to limit the amount of exact transcribing of source materials while taking notes. Lester, James D. Writing Research Papers . 2nd ed., 1976, pp. 46-47.

A legitimate paraphrase:

In research papers, students often quote excessively, failing to keep quoted material down to a desirable level. Since the problem usually originates during note taking, it is essential to minimize the material recorded verbatim (Lester 46-47).

An acceptable summary:

Students should take just a few notes in direct quotation from sources to help minimize the amount of quoted material in a research paper (Lester 46-47).

A plagiarized version:

Students often use too many direct quotations when they take notes, resulting in too many of them in the final research paper. In fact, probably only about 10% of the final copy should consist of directly quoted material. So it is important to limit the amount of source material copied while taking notes.

A note about plagiarism: This example has been classed as plagiarism, in part, because of its failure to deploy any citation. Plagiarism is a serious offense in the academic world. However, we acknowledge that plagiarism is a difficult term to define; that its definition may be contextually sensitive; and that not all instances of plagiarism are created equal—that is, there are varying “degrees of egregiousness” for different cases of plagiarism.

Quoting and Paraphrasing

Download this Handout PDF

College writing often involves integrating information from published sources into your own writing in order to add credibility and authority–this process is essential to research and the production of new knowledge.

However, when building on the work of others, you need to be careful not to plagiarize : “to steal and pass off (the ideas and words of another) as one’s own” or to “present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.”1 The University of Wisconsin–Madison takes this act of “intellectual burglary” very seriously and considers it to be a breach of academic integrity . Penalties are severe.

These materials will help you avoid plagiarism by teaching you how to properly integrate information from published sources into your own writing.

1. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th ed. (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1993), 888.

How to avoid plagiarism

When using sources in your papers, you can avoid plagiarism by knowing what must be documented.

Specific words and phrases

If you use an author’s specific word or words, you must place those words within quotation marks and you must credit the source.

Information and Ideas

Even if you use your own words, if you obtained the information or ideas you are presenting from a source, you must document the source.

Information : If a piece of information isn’t common knowledge (see below), you need to provide a source.

Ideas : An author’s ideas may include not only points made and conclusions drawn, but, for instance, a specific method or theory, the arrangement of material, or a list of steps in a process or characteristics of a medical condition. If a source provided any of these, you need to acknowledge the source.

Common Knowledge?

You do not need to cite a source for material considered common knowledge:

General common knowledge is factual information considered to be in the public domain, such as birth and death dates of well-known figures, and generally accepted dates of military, political, literary, and other historical events. In general, factual information contained in multiple standard reference works can usually be considered to be in the public domain.

Field-specific common knowledge is “common” only within a particular field or specialty. It may include facts, theories, or methods that are familiar to readers within that discipline. For instance, you may not need to cite a reference to Piaget’s developmental stages in a paper for an education class or give a source for your description of a commonly used method in a biology report—but you must be sure that this information is so widely known within that field that it will be shared by your readers.

If in doubt, be cautious and cite the source. And in the case of both general and field-specific common knowledge, if you use the exact words of the reference source, you must use quotation marks and credit the source.

Paraphrasing vs. Quoting — Explanation

Should i paraphrase or quote.

In general, use direct quotations only if you have a good reason. Most of your paper should be in your own words. Also, it’s often conventional to quote more extensively from sources when you’re writing a humanities paper, and to summarize from sources when you’re writing in the social or natural sciences–but there are always exceptions.

In a literary analysis paper , for example, you”ll want to quote from the literary text rather than summarize, because part of your task in this kind of paper is to analyze the specific words and phrases an author uses.

In research papers , you should quote from a source

• to show that an authority supports your point
• to present a position or argument to critique or comment on
• to include especially moving or historically significant language
• to present a particularly well-stated passage whose meaning would be lost or changed if paraphrased or summarized

You should summarize or paraphrase when

• what you want from the source is the idea expressed, and not the specific language used to express it
• you can express in fewer words what the key point of a source is

How to paraphrase a source

General advice.

• When reading a passage, try first to understand it as a whole, rather than pausing to write down specific ideas or phrases.
• Be selective. Unless your assignment is to do a formal or “literal” paraphrase, you usually don?t need to paraphrase an entire passage; instead, choose and summarize the material that helps you make a point in your paper.
• Think of what “your own words” would be if you were telling someone who’s unfamiliar with your subject (your mother, your brother, a friend) what the original source said.
• Remember that you can use direct quotations of phrases from the original within your paraphrase, and that you don’t need to change or put quotation marks around shared language.

Methods of Paraphrasing

• Look away from the source then write. Read the text you want to paraphrase several times until you feel that you understand it and can use your own words to restate it to someone else. Then, look away from the original and rewrite the text in your own words.
• Take notes. Take abbreviated notes; set the notes aside; then paraphrase from the notes a day or so later, or when you draft.

If you find that you can’t do A or B, this may mean that you don’t understand the passage completely or that you need to use a more structured process until you have more experience in paraphrasing.

The method below is not only a way to create a paraphrase but also a way to understand a difficult text.

Paraphrasing difficult texts

Consider the following passage from Love and Toil (a book on motherhood in London from 1870 to 1918), in which the author, Ellen Ross, puts forth one of her major arguments:

• Love and Toil maintains that family survival was the mother’s main charge among the large majority of London?s population who were poor or working class; the emotional and intellectual nurture of her child or children and even their actual comfort were forced into the background. To mother was to work for and organize household subsistence. (p. 9)

Children of the poor at the turn of the century received little if any emotional or intellectual nurturing from their mothers, whose main charge was family survival. Working for and organizing household subsistence were what defined mothering. Next to this, even the children’s basic comfort was forced into the background (Ross, 1995).

According to Ross (1993), poor children at the turn of the century received little mothering in our sense of the term. Mothering was defined by economic status, and among the poor, a mother’s foremost responsibility was not to stimulate her children’s minds or foster their emotional growth but to provide food and shelter to meet the basic requirements for physical survival. Given the magnitude of this task, children were deprived of even the “actual comfort” (p. 9) we expect mothers to provide today.

You may need to go through this process several times to create a satisfactory paraphrase.

Successful vs. unsuccessful paraphrases

Paraphrasing is often defined as putting a passage from an author into “your own words.” But what are your own words? How different must your paraphrase be from the original?

The paragraphs below provide an example by showing a passage as it appears in the source, two paraphrases that follow the source too closely, and a legitimate paraphrase.

The student’s intention was to incorporate the material in the original passage into a section of a paper on the concept of “experts” that compared the functions of experts and nonexperts in several professions.

The Passage as It Appears in the Source

Critical care nurses function in a hierarchy of roles. In this open heart surgery unit, the nurse manager hires and fires the nursing personnel. The nurse manager does not directly care for patients but follows the progress of unusual or long-term patients. On each shift a nurse assumes the role of resource nurse. This person oversees the hour-by-hour functioning of the unit as a whole, such as considering expected admissions and discharges of patients, ascertaining that beds are available for patients in the operating room, and covering sick calls. Resource nurses also take a patient assignment. They are the most experienced of all the staff nurses. The nurse clinician has a separate job description and provides for quality of care by orienting new staff, developing unit policies, and providing direct support where needed, such as assisting in emergency situations. The clinical nurse specialist in this unit is mostly involved with formal teaching in orienting new staff. The nurse manager, nurse clinician, and clinical nurse specialist are the designated experts. They do not take patient assignments. The resource nurse is seen as both a caregiver and a resource to other caregivers. . . . Staff nurses have a hierarchy of seniority. . . . Staff nurses are assigned to patients to provide all their nursing care. (Chase, 1995, p. 156)

Word-for-Word Plagiarism

Critical care nurses have a hierarchy of roles. The nurse manager hires and fires nurses. S/he does not directly care for patients but does follow unusual or long-term cases. On each shift a resource nurse attends to the functioning of the unit as a whole, such as making sure beds are available in the operating room , and also has a patient assignment . The nurse clinician orients new staff, develops policies, and provides support where needed . The clinical nurse specialist also orients new staff, mostly by formal teaching. The nurse manager, nurse clinician, and clinical nurse specialist , as the designated experts, do not take patient assignments . The resource nurse is not only a caregiver but a resource to the other caregivers . Within the staff nurses there is also a hierarchy of seniority . Their job is to give assigned patients all their nursing care .

Why this is plagiarism

Notice that the writer has not only “borrowed” Chase’s material (the results of her research) with no acknowledgment, but has also largely maintained the author’s method of expression and sentence structure. The phrases in red are directly copied from the source or changed only slightly in form.

Even if the student-writer had acknowledged Chase as the source of the content, the language of the passage would be considered plagiarized because no quotation marks indicate the phrases that come directly from Chase. And if quotation marks did appear around all these phrases, this paragraph would be so cluttered that it would be unreadable.

A Patchwork Paraphrase

Chase (1995) describes how nurses in a critical care unit function in a hierarchy that places designated experts at the top and the least senior staff nurses at the bottom. The experts — the nurse manager, nurse clinician, and clinical nurse specialist — are not involved directly in patient care. The staff nurses, in contrast, are assigned to patients and provide all their nursing care . Within the staff nurses is a hierarchy of seniority in which the most senior can become resource nurses: they are assigned a patient but also serve as a resource to other caregivers. The experts have administrative and teaching tasks such as selecting and orienting new staff, developing unit policies , and giving hands-on support where needed.

This paraphrase is a patchwork composed of pieces in the original author’s language (in red) and pieces in the student-writer’s words, all rearranged into a new pattern, but with none of the borrowed pieces in quotation marks. Thus, even though the writer acknowledges the source of the material, the underlined phrases are falsely presented as the student’s own.

A Legitimate Paraphrase

In her study of the roles of nurses in a critical care unit, Chase (1995) also found a hierarchy that distinguished the roles of experts and others. Just as the educational experts described above do not directly teach students, the experts in this unit do not directly attend to patients. That is the role of the staff nurses, who, like teachers, have their own “hierarchy of seniority” (p. 156). The roles of the experts include employing unit nurses and overseeing the care of special patients (nurse manager), teaching and otherwise integrating new personnel into the unit (clinical nurse specialist and nurse clinician), and policy-making (nurse clinician). In an intermediate position in the hierarchy is the resource nurse, a staff nurse with more experience than the others, who assumes direct care of patients as the other staff nurses do, but also takes on tasks to ensure the smooth operation of the entire facility.

Why this is a good paraphrase

The writer has documented Chase’s material and specific language (by direct reference to the author and by quotation marks around language taken directly from the source). Notice too that the writer has modified Chase’s language and structure and has added material to fit the new context and purpose — to present the distinctive functions of experts and nonexperts in several professions.

Shared Language

Perhaps you’ve noticed that a number of phrases from the original passage appear in the legitimate paraphrase: critical care, staff nurses, nurse manager, clinical nurse specialist, nurse clinician, resource nurse.

If all these phrases were in red, the paraphrase would look much like the “patchwork” example. The difference is that the phrases in the legitimate paraphrase are all precise, economical, and conventional designations that are part of the shared language within the nursing discipline (in the too-close paraphrases, they’re red only when used within a longer borrowed phrase).

In every discipline and in certain genres (such as the empirical research report), some phrases are so specialized or conventional that you can’t paraphrase them except by wordy and awkward circumlocutions that would be less familiar (and thus less readable) to the audience.

When you repeat such phrases, you’re not stealing the unique phrasing of an individual writer but using a common vocabulary shared by a community of scholars.

Some Examples of Shared Language You Don’t Need to Put in Quotation Marks

• Conventional designations: e.g., physician’s assistant, chronic low-back pain
• Preferred bias-free language: e.g., persons with disabilities
• Technical terms and phrases of a discipline or genre : e.g., reduplication, cognitive domain, material culture, sexual harassment

Chase, S. K. (1995). The social context of critical care clinical judgment. Heart and Lung, 24, 154-162.

How to Quote a Source

Introducing a quotation.

One of your jobs as a writer is to guide your reader through your text. Don’t simply drop quotations into your paper and leave it to the reader to make connections.

Integrating a quotation into your text usually involves two elements:

• A signal that a quotation is coming–generally the author’s name and/or a reference to the work
• An assertion that indicates the relationship of the quotation to your text

Often both the signal and the assertion appear in a single introductory statement, as in the example below. Notice how a transitional phrase also serves to connect the quotation smoothly to the introductory statement.

Ross (1993), in her study of poor and working-class mothers in London from 1870-1918 [signal], makes it clear that economic status to a large extent determined the meaning of motherhood [assertion]. Among this population [connection], “To mother was to work for and organize household subsistence” (p. 9).

The signal can also come after the assertion, again with a connecting word or phrase:

Illness was rarely a routine matter in the nineteenth century [assertion]. As [connection] Ross observes [signal], “Maternal thinking about children’s health revolved around the possibility of a child’s maiming or death” (p. 166).

Formatting Quotations

Short direct prose.

Incorporate short direct prose quotations into the text of your paper and enclose them in double quotation marks:

According to Jonathan Clarke, “Professional diplomats often say that trying to think diplomatically about foreign policy is a waste of time.”

Longer prose quotations

Begin longer quotations (for instance, in the APA system, 40 words or more) on a new line and indent the entire quotation (i.e., put in block form), with no quotation marks at beginning or end, as in the quoted passage from our Successful vs. Unsucessful Paraphrases page.

Rules about the minimum length of block quotations, how many spaces to indent, and whether to single- or double-space extended quotations vary with different documentation systems; check the guidelines for the system you’re using.

Quotation of Up to 3 Lines of Poetry

Quotations of up to 3 lines of poetry should be integrated into your sentence. For example:

In Julius Caesar, Antony begins his famous speech with “Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears; / I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him” (III.ii.75-76).

Notice that a slash (/) with a space on either side is used to separate lines.

Quotation of More than 3 Lines of Poetry

More than 3 lines of poetry should be indented. As with any extended (indented) quotation, do not use quotation marks unless you need to indicate a quotation within your quotation.

Punctuating with Quotation Marks

Parenthetical citations.

With short quotations, place citations outside of closing quotation marks, followed by sentence punctuation (period, question mark, comma, semi-colon, colon):

Menand (2002) characterizes language as “a social weapon” (p. 115).

With block quotations, check the guidelines for the documentation system you are using.

Commas and periods

Place inside closing quotation marks when no parenthetical citation follows:

Hertzberg (2002) notes that “treating the Constitution as imperfect is not new,” but because of Dahl’s credentials, his “apostasy merits attention” (p. 85).

Semicolons and colons

Place outside of closing quotation marks (or after a parenthetical citation).

Question marks and exclamation points

Place inside closing quotation marks if the quotation is a question/exclamation:

Menand (2001) acknowledges that H. W. Fowler’s Modern English Usage is “a classic of the language,” but he asks, “Is it a dead classic?” (p. 114).

[Note that a period still follows the closing parenthesis.]

Place outside of closing quotation marks if the entire sentence containing the quotation is a question or exclamation:

How many students actually read the guide to find out what is meant by “academic misconduct”?

Quotation within a quotation

Use single quotation marks for the embedded quotation:

According to Hertzberg (2002), Dahl gives the U. S. Constitution “bad marks in ‘democratic fairness’ and ‘encouraging consensus'” (p. 90).

[The phrases “democratic fairness” and “encouraging consensus” are already in quotation marks in Dahl’s sentence.]

Indicating Changes in Quotations

Quoting only a portion of the whole.

Use ellipsis points (. . .) to indicate an omission within a quotation–but not at the beginning or end unless it’s not obvious that you’re quoting only a portion of the whole.

Adding Clarification, Comment, or Correction

Within quotations, use square brackets [ ] (not parentheses) to add your own clarification, comment, or correction.

Use [sic] (meaning “so” or “thus”) to indicate that a mistake is in the source you’re quoting and is not your own.

Additional information

Information on summarizing and paraphrasing sources.

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.). (2000). Retrieved January 7, 2002, from http://www.bartleby.com/61/ Bazerman, C. (1995). The informed writer: Using sources in the disciplines (5th ed). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Leki, I. (1995). Academic writing: Exploring processes and strategies (2nd ed.) New York: St. Martin?s Press, pp. 185-211.

Leki describes the basic method presented in C, pp. 4-5.

Spatt, B. (1999). Writing from sources (5th ed.) New York: St. Martin?s Press, pp. 98-119; 364-371.

Information about specific documentation systems

The Writing Center has handouts explaining how to use many of the standard documentation systems. You may look at our general Web page on Documentation Systems, or you may check out any of the following specific Web pages.

If you’re not sure which documentation system to use, ask the course instructor who assigned your paper.

• American Psychological Assoicaion (APA)
• Modern Language Association (MLA)
• Chicago/Turabian (A Footnote or Endnote System)
• American Political Science Association (APSA)
• Council of Science Editors (CBE)
• Numbered References

You may also consult the following guides:

• American Medical Association, Manual for Authors and Editors
• Council of Science Editors, CBE style Manual
• The Chicago Manual of Style
• MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers
• Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association

Academic and Professional Writing

This is an accordion element with a series of buttons that open and close related content panels.

Analysis Papers

Reading Poetry

A Short Guide to Close Reading for Literary Analysis

Using Literary Quotations

Play Reviews

Writing a Rhetorical Précis to Analyze Nonfiction Texts

Incorporating Interview Data

Grant Proposals

Planning and Writing a Grant Proposal: The Basics

Additional Resources for Grants and Proposal Writing

Job Materials and Application Essays

Writing Personal Statements for Ph.D. Programs

• Before you begin: useful tips for writing your essay
• Guided brainstorming exercises
• Get more help with your essay
• Frequently Asked Questions

Resume Writing Tips

CV Writing Tips

Cover Letters

Business Letters

Proposals and Dissertations

Resources for Proposal Writers

Resources for Dissertators

Research Papers

Planning and Writing Research Papers

Writing Annotated Bibliographies

Creating Poster Presentations

Writing an Abstract for Your Research Paper

Thank-You Notes

Advice for Students Writing Thank-You Notes to Donors

Reading for a Review

Critical Reviews

Writing a Review of Literature

Scientific Reports

Scientific Report Format

Sample Lab Assignment

Writing for the Web

Writing an Effective Blog Post

Writing for Social Media: A Guide for Academics

The Sheridan Libraries

• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Sheridan Libraries
• What is Plagiarism?
• School Plagiarism Policies
• Common Knowledge
• Paraphrasing & Summarizing
• Minimizing Your Plagiarism Risk
• Student Help
• Helping Prevent Plagiarism in Your Classroom
• Avoiding Plagiarism Course
• Course FAQs

Quoting is when you use someone else’s exact words in your paper. It requires that quotation marks go around that author’s words, and the quotation is followed by an in-text citation.

Good Reasons to Quote

• A quote exactly reinforces a point I want to make, and I want to emphasize the authority of the expert with her or his own voice.
• The language is unique or unusual. If I rewrote it in my own words, it would lose this quality.

How Does Quoting Work?

• Key Rules of Quoting
• Sample Quotation (APA Style)
• Step-by-Step Quoting

• The exact words of the author are in quotation marks
• The quote is introduced so the reader is alerted that these are not the words of the student
• The quote is properly cited in the text and the reference list

Explore the other tabs to see a sample quote and learn the steps of recording a quote properly. 

Author’s original text

Business communication is increasingly taking place internationally – in all countries, among all peoples, and across all cultures. An awareness of other cultures – of their languages, customs, experiences and perceptions – as well as an awareness of the way in which other people conduct their business, are now essential ingredients of business communication. 

Example quotation that could be added to a paper

 As business communication spans the globe, “an awareness of other cultures – of their languages, customs, experiences and perceptions – as well as an awareness of the way in which other people conduct their business, are now essential ingredients of business communication” (Chase, O’Rourke & Wallace, 2003, p.59). 

• Find a portion of a book, journal, or website that you would like to use in your paper. Copy the words you plan to use.
• Put quotation marks at the beginning and end of the copied text.
• Add an in-text citation at the end of the quoted text (outside the quotation mark).
• Write (in your own words) to give context or introduce the quoted text.
• Add the sentence with your own words, the quote, and the in-text citation to your paper.
• Add the full citation to your reference list at the end of your paper.

How Much to Quote?

No matter what the source or style, you need to cite it both in-text and at the end of the paper with a full citation! Write down or record all the needed pieces of information when researching to ensure you avoid plagiarism.

 Lester, J.D. (1976). Writing Research Papers (2nd ed.). Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman. 

Cheat Sheet

• Quoting Download this helpful cheat sheet covering "Quoting."
• << Previous: Citing
• Next: Paraphrasing & Summarizing >>
• Last Updated: Aug 7, 2023 2:00 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.jhu.edu/avoidingplagiarism

Exploring the gray area: Understanding paraphrasing as a potential path to plagiarism

Five reasons that paraphrasing skills are the superheroes of strong literacy curriculum.

The Paraphrasing Pack consists of resources that are ready to be implemented in the 6th - 12th-grade classroom.

A resource to guide educators in reviewing/revising existing academic integrity policies to address threats from AI.

By completing this form, you agree to Turnitin's Privacy Policy . Turnitin uses the information you provide to contact you with relevant information. You may unsubscribe from these communications at any time.

In the labyrinthine world of academic writing, paraphrasing walks a thin line between being a useful tool and a potential pitfall, leading to plagiarism.

Often referred to as "patchwriting" or " mosaic plagiarism," the act of paraphrasing raises a fundamental question: What makes writing truly original in an era saturated with accessible information? Mark Twain's assertion that all ideas are merely reconfigurations of existing ones challenges us to consider the essence of originality. This blog ventures into the complex dynamics of paraphrasing, disentangling its legitimate use from its problematic misuse. We'll delve into what constitutes effective paraphrasing that respects academic integrity and when it veers into the territory of plagiarism.

Unpacking the art of paraphrasing

Paraphrasing serves as a bridge, translating complex or specialized topics into accessible and simplified language. It is also a way for a student or researcher to synthesize what they have read, putting text into their own words to A) better understand the topic at hand and B) support their writing with a sound, meaningfully reworded example from an outside source. The Office of Research Integrity within the US Department of Health & Human Services offers a compelling example, transforming a dense scientific explanation into a concise, digestible format. Below is the original content: “Because the intracellular concentration of potassium ions is relatively high, potassium ions tend to diffuse out of the cell. This movement is driven by the concentration gradient for potassium ions. Similarly, the concentration gradient for sodium ions tends to promote their movement into the cell. However, the cell membrane is significantly more permeable to potassium ions than to sodium ions. As a result, potassium ions diffuse out of the cell faster than sodium ions enter the cytoplasm. The cell therefore experiences a net loss of positive charges, and as a result the interior of the cell membrane contains an excess of negative charges, primarily from negatively charged proteins” (Martini & Bartholomew, 1997, p. 204).

Here is an appropriate paraphrase of the above material:

“A textbook of anatomy and physiology (Martini & Bartholomew, 1997, p. 204) reports that the concentration of potassium ions inside of the cell is relatively high and, consequently, some potassium tends to escape out of the cell. Just the opposite occurs with sodium ions.”

The Office of Research Integrity also gives an example of an inappropriate version of paraphrasing from the original text: “...This movement is triggered by the concentration gradient for potassium ions. Similarly, the concentration gradient for sodium ions tends to promote their movement into the cell. However, the cell membrane is much more permeable to potassium ions than it is to sodium ions. As a result, potassium ions diffuse out of the cell more rapidly than sodium ions enter the cytoplasm…” (Martini & Bartholomew, 1997, p. 204). You’ll note that the above “rewritten” example is basically a copy of the original, save for a few superficial alterations, including word deletions, synonym swaps, and additions.

Because most of the words and structure of the original paragraph remain the same, this paragraph would technically be considered plagiarism, despite the writer crediting the original authors. As the Office of Research Integrity puts it: “[M]aking only cosmetic modifications to others’ writing misleads the reader as to who the true author of the original writing really is." In this scenario, a student could instead ask for support in learning how to more accurately paraphrase the information or alternatively, use a direct quote with a correctly cited source to make it clear that this is not their content. Effective paraphrasing isn't just about avoiding plagiarism; it's about enhancing comprehension and adding value to the discourse.

The original thought conundrum

In the realm of academic discourse, Bloom's Taxonomy emerges as a crucial framework, offering a layered understanding of cognitive development. This taxonomy, a hierarchy starting from basic knowledge recall to the creation of new ideas, challenges us to consider the concept of 'original thought' in education. As we go from 'Remembering' and 'Understanding' through to 'Applying', 'Analyzing', and 'Evaluating', we reach the peak - 'Creating'. This final stage is where originality is presumed to flourish. However, this presents a conundrum: in an age where information is ubiquitous and influences are numerous, can any thought claim absolute originality? This paradox is especially relevant in a digital era saturated with ideas, where the difference between inspiration and replication becomes increasingly blurred. Bloom’s Taxonomy, therefore, not only maps out cognitive skills but also invites a deeper reflection on the nature and possibility of truly original thought in our modern knowledge ecosystem.

What’s the difference between plagiarism and paraphrasing?

Plagiarism and paraphrasing, while seemingly similar, diverge significantly in intent and execution. Plagiarism is the act of passing off someone else's work or ideas as one's own while paraphrasing, in contrast, aims to rearticulate ideas for clarity while maintaining the essence of the original work. Paraphrasing becomes problematic when it strays into the realm of plagiarism, often manifested in the failure to properly attribute sources, bring new insights to the table, or to uphold academic integrity. To wholly uphold academic integrity is to commit to honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage. It is a holistic concept that must be backed up by institutional policies, curriculum, teaching interventions, assessment design, and feedback loops that strengthen a student’s bond to learning. In an earlier post, we explored the ways in which paraphrasing may become problematic. The following three examples are situations that may cause challenges around paraphrasing expectations:

• When a student does not understand the purpose behind paraphrasing, they may not see the importance of attributing what they've paraphrased and therefore overlook doing so . Educators must take great care in building a culture of academic integrity and explaining to students how cited, well-paraphrased passages not only enhance their writing (and also provide variety in an essay that would otherwise be all quotations), they uphold integrity by recognizing an author’s original work.
• When a student does not have the foundational literacy skills to paraphrase, it may lead them to unintentionally plagiarize. In a suspected case of academic misconduct, an educator must ascertain if it is a skill deficit or deliberate plagiarism. From there, strengthening a student’s literary comprehension skills and basic academic writing skills can help bolster their confidence and ability to paraphrase. Turnitin’s Draft Coach can also be used to help students write accurate citations in Microsoft® Word for the web and Google Docs™.
• When a student knowingly and purposely uses short-cut solutions in place of their own skills, it’s a sign that action must be taken. Paraphrasing tools, also known as word spinners, alter existing text with the purpose of evading plagiarism detection software. This deeply impacts learning because they prevent students from understanding how to truly paraphrase.

Steering clear of paraphrasing pitfalls

Avoiding paraphrasing plagiarism is a nuanced skill, requiring a blend of accurate citation, original sentence structuring, and a deep understanding of the source material. There are many ways to avoid paraphrasing plagiarism while still paraphrasing to summarize work and communicate topics more clearly and holistically. Ways to avoid plagiarizing include:

• Correct citation of sources
• Quoting and summarizing texts accurately
• Writing with your own sentence structures
• Understanding text and content clearly before paraphrasing

There is also a helpful paraphrasing strategy called the 4R’s: Read, Restate, Recheck, and Repair.

• Read: Did you understand the passage?
• Restate: Did you restate important points in your own words?
• Recheck: Did you include all of the important details?
• Repair: Did you correct any misinformation?

In addition to the above, the following sections delve into key elements to keep in mind and practical strategies to master this skill, ensuring that paraphrasing enriches, rather than diminishes, academic integrity.

The role of text spinners in paraphrasing plagiarism

Text spinners, or article spinners, present a new hurdle in the realm of paraphrasing plagiarism. These tools, designed to disguise copied content as original, exacerbate the issue by blurring the lines between legitimate paraphrasing and deceptive rewriting. “Simply put,” says Christine Lee, “when students use word spinners, they aren’t producing their own original work. Original work means that even when paraphrasing, students regenerate the ideas of another person into their own words and voice to express their own understanding of concepts.” Educators need to understand the emerging trends in misconduct and academic integrity so that they can build awareness around them, educate students on their misuse, and mitigate any threats to an institution's reputation to ensure authentic student learning.

How to effectively teach paraphrasing

Educators bear the responsibility of guiding students through the maze of paraphrasing. This entails instilling respect for academic integrity, teaching proper citation techniques, and encouraging the development of independent thought. To start, it is imperative to highlight examples of accurate paraphrasing and how it differs from quotations and summarizing. As quoted in an earlier Turnitin post, according to the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL):

• Quotations must be identical to the original, using a narrow segment of the source. They must match the source document word for word and must be attributed to the original author.
• Paraphrasing involves rewording a passage from source material into your own words. A paraphrase must also be attributed to the original source because there is no creation of new ideas. Paraphrased material is usually shorter than the original passage, taking a somewhat broader segment of the source and condensing it slightly.
• Summarizing involves putting the main idea(s) into your own words, including only the main point(s). Once again, it is necessary to attribute summarized ideas to the original source because no new ideas have been introduced. Summaries are significantly shorter than the original and take a broad overview of the source material.

And while there are myriad ways for educators to approach and teach this highly important skill, the following are a few resources that can support thoughtful plagiarism education and practice:

• Explain the course’s or institution’s policy on academic integrity clearly and early in the semester. Outline course and assignment expectations explicitly, including appropriate use and misuse of AI tools. By building a culture of integrity that is clearly defined, students can more deeply understand the value of accurate paraphrasing and citations, as well as understand the consequences of misconduct.
• Dive into Turnitin’s Paraphrasing Pack , eleven out-of-the-box resources developed by veteran educators that are ready to be implemented in the classroom. It features everything from research strategies and student checklists for paraphrasing to lesson presentations and printable graphic organizers.
• Explore all of the resources that support academic integrity in the age of AI , including valuable assets that help students to better understand how and when to use AI tools ethically.
• Conduct a candid conversation with a student if their work appears to have similarities to other texts without proper paraphrasing or citation, or if inappropriate usage of AI tools is suspected. These dialogues often transform a moment of misconduct into an opportunity for learning by determining if there is a skill deficit that can be readily addressed. The data housed in the Similarity Report, including instances of synonym swapping, as well as Turnitin’s AI writing detection tool, can both serve as jumping off points for these essential conversations.

Maintaining academic integrity while paraphrasing

While building that culture of academic integrity and teaching skills is the first step, educators know that oftentimes it’s necessary to take another step, one that will confirm or refute that the student’s work is solely their own. It may be as simple as a remarkably sophisticated sentence structure or vocabulary choice, but educators tend to recognize when a student misrepresents something that is not their work, as their own. That next step is as simple as reviewing Turnitin’s newly enhanced Similarity Report, which has a streamlined workflow to show both the Similarity Score and the AI writing score. While AI continues to evolve, so too does the students’ use of AI tools. Turnitin’s AI writing score may indicate the use of AI paraphrasing tools to modify AI-generated content. Educators have no “extra clicks” as AI paraphrasing detection is built seamlessly into the existing workflow that educators already use and trust. As before, this score is to inform the educator of the likelihood that the student tried to use AI paraphrasing tools as a shortcut; whether intentional plagiarism or not is determined by the educator and the student during formative discussions surrounding their work. Then, next steps to help a student to revise can be taken. Check out this infographic that defines the key differences between human- powered paraphrasing and AI paraphrasing tools, as well as the role an AI paraphrasing detector can play in this process.

In sum: How to skillfully paraphrase and avoid plagiarism

The skill of paraphrasing is foundational in academic writing, serving as a safeguard against the pitfalls of plagiarism and academic misconduct. When a student fails to master this skill, they risk inadvertently crossing the line from legitimate use of sources to plagiarism, a serious breach of academic integrity. Effective paraphrasing involves more than just altering a few words; it requires a deep understanding of the original text and the ability to express its essence in a new, original form while maintaining the core message. This process must be coupled with accurate citations and the appropriate use of quotes to credit the original authors. Without these critical components, a student's work can easily fall into the realm of academic dishonesty. Thus, learning to paraphrase correctly is not just about avoiding plagiarism; it's about respecting the intellectual labor of others, upholding the values of academic integrity, and contributing genuinely to the scholarly conversation.

• Utility Menu

fa3d988da6f218669ec27d6b6019a0cd

A publication of the harvard college writing program.

Harvard Guide to Using Sources 

• The Honor Code
• What Constitutes Plagiarism?

In academic writing, it is considered plagiarism to draw any idea or any language from someone else without adequately crediting that source in your paper. It doesn't matter whether the source is a published author, another student, a website without clear authorship, a website that sells academic papers, or any other person: Taking credit for anyone else's work is stealing, and it is unacceptable in all academic situations, whether you do it intentionally or by accident.

The ease with which you can find information of all kinds online means that you need to be extra vigilant about keeping track of where you are getting information and ideas and about giving proper credit to the authors of the sources you use. If you cut and paste from an electronic document into your notes and forget to clearly label the document in your notes, or if you draw information from a series of websites without taking careful notes, you may end up taking credit for ideas that aren't yours, whether you mean to or not.

It's important to remember that every website is a document with an author, and therefore every website must be cited properly in your paper. For example, while it may seem obvious to you that an idea drawn from Professor Steven Pinker's book The Language Instinct should only appear in your paper if you include a clear citation, it might be less clear that information you glean about language acquisition from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy website warrants a similar citation. Even though the authorship of this encyclopedia entry is less obvious than it might be if it were a print article (you need to scroll down the page to see the author's name, and if you don't do so you might mistakenly think an author isn't listed), you are still responsible for citing this material correctly. Similarly, if you consult a website that has no clear authorship, you are still responsible for citing the website as a source for your paper. The kind of source you use, or the absence of an author linked to that source, does not change the fact that you always need to cite your sources (see Evaluating Web Sources ).

Verbatim Plagiarism

If you copy language word for word from another source and use that language in your paper, you are plagiarizing verbatim . Even if you write down your own ideas in your own words and place them around text that you've drawn directly from a source, you must give credit to the author of the source material, either by placing the source material in quotation marks and providing a clear citation, or by paraphrasing the source material and providing a clear citation.

The passage below comes from Ellora Derenoncourt’s article, “Can You Move to Opportunity? Evidence from the Great Migration.”

Here is the article citation in APA style:

Derenoncourt, E. (2022). Can you move to opportunity? Evidence from the Great Migration. The American Economic Review , 112(2), 369–408. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20200002

Source material

Why did urban Black populations in the North increase so dramatically between 1940 and 1970? After a period of reduced mobility during the Great Depression, Black out-migration from the South resumed at an accelerated pace after 1940. Wartime jobs in the defense industry and in naval shipyards led to substantial Black migration to California and other Pacific states for the first time since the Migration began. Migration continued apace to midwestern cities in the 1950s and1960s, as the booming automobile industry attracted millions more Black southerners to the North, particularly to cities like Detroit or Cleveland. Of the six million Black migrants who left the South during the Great Migration, four million of them migrated between 1940 and 1970 alone.

Plagiarized version

While this student has written her own sentence introducing the topic, she has copied the italicized sentences directly from the source material. She has left out two sentences from Derenoncourt’s paragraph, but has reproduced the rest verbatim:

But things changed mid-century. After a period of reduced mobility during the Great Depression, Black out-migration from the South resumed at an accelerated pace after 1940. Wartime jobs in the defense industry and in naval shipyards led to substantial Black migration to California and other Pacific states for the first time since the Migration began. Migration continued apace to midwestern cities in the 1950s and1960s, as the booming automobile industry attracted millions more Black southerners to the North, particularly to cities like Detroit or Cleveland.

Acceptable version #1: Paraphrase with citation

In this version the student has paraphrased Derenoncourt’s passage, making it clear that these ideas come from a source by introducing the section with a clear signal phrase ("as Derenoncourt explains…") and citing the publication date, as APA style requires.

But things changed mid-century. In fact, as Derenoncourt (2022) explains, the wartime increase in jobs in both defense and naval shipyards marked the first time during the Great Migration that Black southerners went to California and other west coast states. After the war, the increase in jobs in the car industry led to Black southerners choosing cities in the midwest, including Detroit and Cleveland.

Acceptable version #2 : Direct quotation with citation or direct quotation and paraphrase with citation

If you quote directly from an author and cite the quoted material, you are giving credit to the author. But you should keep in mind that quoting long passages of text is only the best option if the particular language used by the author is important to your paper. Social scientists and STEM scholars rarely quote in their writing, paraphrasing their sources instead. If you are writing in the humanities, you should make sure that you only quote directly when you think it is important for your readers to see the original language.

In the example below, the student quotes part of the passage and paraphrases the rest.

But things changed mid-century. In fact, as Derenoncourt (2022) explains, “after a period of reduced mobility during the Great Depression, Black out-migration from the South resumed at an accelerated pace after 1940” (p. 379). Derenoncourt notes that after the war, the increase in jobs in the car industry led to Black southerners choosing cities in the midwest, including Detroit and Cleveland.

Mosaic Plagiarism

If you copy bits and pieces from a source (or several sources), changing a few words here and there without either adequately paraphrasing or quoting directly, the result is mosaic plagiarism . Even if you don't intend to copy the source, you may end up with this type of plagiarism as a result of careless note-taking and confusion over where your source's ideas end and your own ideas begin. You may think that you've paraphrased sufficiently or quoted relevant passages, but if you haven't taken careful notes along the way, or if you've cut and pasted from your sources, you can lose track of the boundaries between your own ideas and those of your sources. It's not enough to have good intentions and to cite some of the material you use. You are responsible for making clear distinctions between your ideas and the ideas of the scholars who have informed your work. If you keep track of the ideas that come from your sources and have a clear understanding of how your own ideas differ from those ideas, and you follow the correct citation style, you will avoid mosaic plagiarism.

Indeed, of the more than 3500 hours of instruction during medical school, an average of less than 60 hours are devoted to all of bioethics, health law and health economics combined . Most of the instruction is during the preclinical courses, leaving very little instructional time when students are experiencing bioethical or legal challenges during their hands-on, clinical training. More than 60 percent of the instructors in bioethics, health law, and health economics have not published since 1990 on the topic they are teaching.

--Persad, G.C., Elder, L., Sedig,L., Flores, L., & Emanuel, E. (2008). The current state of medical school education in bioethics, health law, and health economics. Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics 36 , 89-94.

Students can absorb the educational messages in medical dramas when they view them for entertainment. In fact, even though they were not created specifically for education, these programs can be seen as an entertainment-education tool [43, 44]. In entertainment-education shows, viewers are exposed to educational content in entertainment contexts, using visual language that is easy to understand and triggers emotional engagement [45]. The enhanced emotional engagement and cognitive development [5] and moral imagination make students more sensitive to training [22].

--Cambra-Badii, I., Moyano, E., Ortega, I., Josep-E Baños, & Sentí, M. (2021). TV medical dramas: Health sciences students’ viewing habits and potential for teaching issues related to bioethics and professionalism. BMC Medical Education, 21 , 1-11. doi: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-021-02947-7

Paragraph #1.

All of the ideas in this paragraph after the first sentence are drawn directly from Persad. But because the student has placed the citation mid-paragraph, the final two sentences wrongly appear to be the student’s own idea:

In order to advocate for the use of medical television shows in the medical education system, it is also important to look at the current bioethical curriculum. In the more than 3500 hours of training that students undergo in medical school, only about 60 hours are focused on bioethics, health law, and health economics (Persad et al, 2008). It is also problematic that students receive this training before they actually have spent time treating patients in the clinical setting. Most of these hours are taught by instructors without current publications in the field.

Paragraph #2.

All of the italicized ideas in this paragraph are either paraphrased or taken verbatim from Cambra-Badii, et al., but the student does not cite the source at all. As a result, readers will assume that the student has come up with these ideas himself:

Students can absorb the educational messages in medical dramas when they view them for entertainment. It doesn’t matter if the shows were designed for medical students; they can still be a tool for education. In these hybrid entertainment-education shows, viewers are exposed to educational content that triggers an emotional reaction. By allowing for this emotional, cognitive, and moral engagement, the shows make students more sensitive to training . There may be further applications to this type of education: the role of entertainment as a way of encouraging students to consider ethical situations could be extended to other professions, including law or even education.

The student has come up with the final idea in the paragraph (that this type of ethical training could apply to other professions), but because nothing in the paragraph is cited, it reads as if it is part of a whole paragraph of his own ideas, rather than the point that he is building to after using the ideas from the article without crediting the authors.

Acceptable version

In the first paragraph, the student uses signal phrases in nearly every sentence to reference the authors (“According to Persad et al.,” “As the researchers argue,” “They also note”), which makes it clear throughout the paragraph that all of the paragraph’s information has been drawn from Persad et al. The student also uses a clear APA in-text citation to point the reader to the original article. In the second paragraph, the student paraphrases and cites the source’s ideas and creates a clear boundary behind those ideas and his own, which appear in the final paragraph.

In order to advocate for the use of medical television shows in the medical education system, it is also important to look at the current bioethical curriculum. According to Persad et al. (2008), only about one percent of teaching time throughout the four years of medical school is spent on ethics. As the researchers argue, this presents a problem because the students are being taught about ethical issues before they have a chance to experience those issues themselves. They also note that more than sixty percent of instructors teaching bioethics to medical students have no recent publications in the subject.

The research suggests that medical dramas may be a promising source for discussions of medical ethics. Cambra-Badii et al. (2021) explain that even when watched for entertainment, medical shows can help viewers engage emotionally with the characters and may prime them to be more receptive to training in medical ethics. There may be further applications to this type of education: the role of entertainment as a way of encouraging students to consider ethical situations could be extended to other professions, including law or even education.

Inadequate Paraphrase

When you paraphrase, your task is to distill the source's ideas in your own words. It's not enough to change a few words here and there and leave the rest; instead, you must completely restate the ideas in the passage in your own words. If your own language is too close to the original, then you are plagiarizing, even if you do provide a citation.

In order to make sure that you are using your own words, it's a good idea to put away the source material while you write your paraphrase of it. This way, you will force yourself to distill the point you think the author is making and articulate it in a new way. Once you have done this, you should look back at the original and make sure that you have represented the source’s ideas accurately and that you have not used the same words or sentence structure. If you do want to use some of the author's words for emphasis or clarity, you must put those words in quotation marks and provide a citation.

The passage below comes from Michael Sandel’s article, “The Case Against Perfection.” Here’s the article citation in MLA style:

Sandel, Michael. “The Case Against Perfection.” The Atlantic , April 2004, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/04/the-case-against-pe... .

Though there is much to be said for this argument, I do not think the main problem with enhancement and genetic engineering is that they undermine effort and erode human agency. The deeper danger is that they represent a kind of hyperagency—a Promethean aspiration to remake nature, including human nature, to serve our purposes and satisfy our desires. The problem is not the drift to mechanism but the drive to mastery. And what the drive to mastery misses and may even destroy is an appreciation of the gifted character of human powers and achievements.

The version below is an inadequate paraphrase because the student has only cut or replaced a few words: “I do not think the main problem” became “the main problem is not”; “deeper danger” became “bigger problem”; “aspiration” became “desire”; “the gifted character of human powers and achievements” became “the gifts that make our achievements possible.”

The main problem with enhancement and genetic engineering is not that they undermine effort and erode human agency. The bigger problem is that they represent a kind of hyperagency—a Promethean desire to remake nature, including human nature, to serve our purposes and satisfy our desires. The problem is not the drift to mechanism but the drive to mastery. And what the drive to mastery misses and may even destroy is an appreciation of the gifts that make our achievements possible (Sandel).

Acceptable version #1: Adequate paraphrase with citation

In this version, the student communicates Sandel’s ideas but does not borrow language from Sandel. Because the student uses Sandel’s name in the first sentence and has consulted an online version of the article without page numbers, there is no need for a parenthetical citation.

Michael Sandel disagrees with the argument that genetic engineering is a problem because it replaces the need for humans to work hard and make their own choices. Instead, he argues that we should be more concerned that the decision to use genetic enhancement is motivated by a desire to take control of nature and bend it to our will instead of appreciating its gifts.

Acceptable version #2: Direct quotation with citation

In this version, the student uses Sandel’s words in quotation marks and provides a clear MLA in-text citation. In cases where you are going to talk about the exact language that an author uses, it is acceptable to quote longer passages of text. If you are not going to discuss the exact language, you should paraphrase rather than quoting extensively.

The author argues that “the main problem with enhancement and genetic engineering is not that they undermine effort and erode human agency,” but, rather that “they represent a kind of hyperagency—a Promethean desire to remake nature, including human nature, to serve our purposes and satisfy our desires. The problem is not the drift to mechanism but the drive to mastery. And what the drive to mastery misses and may even destroy is an appreciation of the gifts that make our achievements possible” (Sandel).

Uncited Paraphrase

When you use your own language to describe someone else's idea, that idea still belongs to the author of the original material. Therefore, it's not enough to paraphrase the source material responsibly; you also need to cite the source, even if you have changed the wording significantly. As with quoting, when you paraphrase you are offering your reader a glimpse of someone else's work on your chosen topic, and you should also provide enough information for your reader to trace that work back to its original form. The rule of thumb here is simple: Whenever you use ideas that you did not think up yourself, you need to give credit to the source in which you found them, whether you quote directly from that material or provide a responsible paraphrase.

The passage below comes from C. Thi Nguyen’s article, “Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles.”

Here’s the citation for the article, in APA style:

Nguyen, C. (2020). Echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. Episteme, 17 (2), 141-161. doi:10.1017/epi.2018.32

Epistemic bubbles can easily form accidentally. But the most plausible explanation for the particular features of echo chambers is something more malicious. Echo chambers are excellent tools to maintain, reinforce, and expand power through epistemic control. Thus, it is likely (though not necessary) that echo chambers are set up intentionally, or at least maintained, for this functionality (Nguyen, 2020).

The student who wrote the paraphrase below has drawn these ideas directly from Nguyen’s article but has not credited the author. Although she paraphrased adequately, she is still responsible for citing Nguyen as the source of this information.

Echo chambers and epistemic bubbles have different origins. While epistemic bubbles can be created organically, it’s more likely that echo chambers will be formed by those who wish to keep or even grow their control over the information that people hear and understand.

In this version, the student eliminates any possible ambiguity about the source of the ideas in the paragraph. By using a signal phrase to name the author whenever the source of the ideas could be unclear, the student clearly attributes these ideas to Nguyen.

According to Nguyen (2020), echo chambers and epistemic bubbles have different origins. Nguyen argues that while epistemic bubbles can be created organically, it’s more likely that echo chambers will be formed by those who wish to keep or even grow their control over the information that people hear and understand.

Uncited Quotation

When you put source material in quotation marks in your essay, you are telling your reader that you have drawn that material from somewhere else. But it's not enough to indicate that the material in quotation marks is not the product of your own thinking or experimentation: You must also credit the author of that material and provide a trail for your reader to follow back to the original document. This way, your reader will know who did the original work and will also be able to go back and consult that work if they are interested in learning more about the topic. Citations should always go directly after quotations.

The passage below comes from Deirdre Mask’s nonfiction book, The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power.

Here is the MLA citation for the book:

Mask, Deirdre. The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power. St. Martin’s Griffin, 2021.

In New York, even addresses are for sale. The city allows a developer, for the bargain price of $11,000 (as of 2019), to apply to change the street address to something more attractive.

It’s not enough for the student to indicate that these words come from a source; the source must be cited:

After all, “in New York, even addresses are for sale. The city allows a developer, for the bargain price of $11,000 (as of 2019), to apply to change the street address to something more attractive.”

Here, the student has cited the source of the quotation using an MLA in-text citation:

After all, “in New York, even addresses are for sale. The city allows a developer, for the bargain price of $11,000 (as of 2019), to apply to change the street address to something more attractive” (Mask 229).

Using Material from Another Student's Work

In some courses you will be allowed or encouraged to form study groups, to work together in class generating ideas, or to collaborate on your thinking in other ways. Even in those cases, it's imperative that you understand whether all of your writing must be done independently, or whether group authorship is permitted. Most often, even in courses that allow some collaborative discussion, the writing or calculations that you do must be your own. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't collect feedback on your writing from a classmate or a writing tutor; rather, it means that the argument you make (and the ideas you rely on to make it) should either be your own or you should give credit to the source of those ideas.

So what does this mean for the ideas that emerge from class discussion or peer review exercises? Unlike the ideas that your professor offers in lecture (you should always cite these), ideas that come up in the course of class discussion or peer review are collaborative, and often not just the product of one individual's thinking. If, however, you see a clear moment in discussion when a particular student comes up with an idea, you should cite that student. In any case, when your work is informed by class discussions, it's courteous and collegial to include a discursive footnote in your paper that lets your readers know about that discussion. So, for example, if you were writing a paper about the narrator in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and you came up with your idea during a discussion in class, you might place a footnote in your paper that states the following: "I am indebted to the members of my Expos 20 section for sparking my thoughts about the role of the narrator as Greek Chorus in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried ."

It is important to note that collaboration policies can vary by course, even within the same department, and you are responsible for familiarizing yourself with each course's expectation about collaboration. Collaboration policies are often stated in the syllabus, but if you are not sure whether it is appropriate to collaborate on work for any course, you should always consult your instructor.

• The Exception: Common Knowledge
• Other Scenarios to Avoid
• Why Does it Matter if You Plagiarize?
• How to Avoid Plagiarism
• Harvard University Plagiarism Policy

PDFs for This Section

• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Online Library and Citation Tools

Academic Integrity at MIT

A handbook for students, search form, avoiding plagiarism - quoting.

When the words of an expert, authority, or relevant individual are particularly clear or expressive, you may want to quote them.

Do not quote all the time: save quotes for instances where the wording is especially powerful.

When should I quote?

When language is particularly vivid or expressive.

When exact wording is needed for technical accuracy.

When the words of an important authority lend weight to an argument.

How do I show I am quoting?

Name the source in an introductory phrase.

Use quotation marks or indent long quotations.

Cite the source appropriately.

If you fail to do this, it is plagiarism .

• school Campus Bookshelves
• menu_book Bookshelves
• perm_media Learning Objects
• login Login
• how_to_reg Request Instructor Account
• hub Instructor Commons

Margin Size

• Download Page (PDF)
• Download Full Book (PDF)
• Periodic Table
• Physics Constants
• Scientific Calculator
• Reference & Cite
• Tools expand_more
• Readability

selected template will load here

This action is not available.

6.10: Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Avoiding Plagiarism

• Last updated
• Save as PDF
• Page ID 22533

\( \newcommand{\vecs}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \)

\( \newcommand{\vecd}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash {#1}}} \)

\( \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\) \( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)

( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\) \( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\) \( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\)

\( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\) \( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\)

\( \newcommand{\inner}[2]{\langle #1, #2 \rangle}\)

\( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)

\( \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\)

\( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\)

\( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\)

\( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\)

\( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\)

\( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\) \( \newcommand{\AA}{\unicode[.8,0]{x212B}}\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorA}[1]{\vec{#1}}      % arrow\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorAt}[1]{\vec{\text{#1}}}      % arrow\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorB}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorC}[1]{\textbf{#1}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorD}[1]{\overrightarrow{#1}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorDt}[1]{\overrightarrow{\text{#1}}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectE}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash{\mathbf {#1}}}} \)

How to Summarize:  An Overview

How to quote and paraphrase:  an overview, when to quote, when to paraphrase, four examples of quotes and paraphrases, how to avoid plagiarism in the research process, plagiarism and the internet.

• Stay “neutral” in your summarizing.  Summaries provide “just the facts” and are not the place where you offer your opinions about the text you are summarizing.  Save your opinions and evaluation of the evidence you are summarizing for other parts of your writing.
• Don’t quote from what you are summarizing.  Summaries will be more useful to you and your colleagues if you write them in your own words.
• Don’t “cut and paste” from database abstracts.  Many of the periodical indexes that are available as part of your library’s computer system include abstracts of articles.  Do no “cut” this abstract material and then “paste” it into your own annotated bibliography.  For one thing, this is plagiarism.  Second, “cutting and pasting” from the abstract defeats one of the purposes of writing summaries and creating an annotated bibliography in the first place, which is to help you understand and explain your research.
• be “introduced” to the reader, particularly the first time you mention a source;
• include an explanation of the evidence which explains to the reader why you think the evidence is important, especially if it is not apparent from the context of the quote or paraphrase; and
• include a proper citation of the source.
• The exact words of your source are important for the point you are trying to make.  This is especially true if you are quoting technical language, terms, or very specific word choices.
• You want to highlight your agreement with the author’s words .  If you agree with the point the author of the evidence makes and you like their exact words, use them as a quote.
• You want to highlight your disagreement with the author’s words .  In other words, you may sometimes want to use a direct quote to indicate exactly what it is you disagree about.  This might be particularly true when you are considering the antithetical positions in your research writing projects.
• There is no good reason to use a quote to refer to your evidence.  If the author’s exact words are not especially important to the point you are trying to make, you are usually better off paraphrasing the evidence.
• You are trying to explain a particular a piece of evidence in order to explain or interpret it in more detail .  This might be particularly true in writing projects like critiques.
• You need to balance a direct quote in your writing.  You need to be careful about directly quoting your research too much because it can sometimes make for awkward and difficult to read prose.  So, one of the reasons to use a paraphrase instead of a quote is to create balance within your writing.

Tips for Quoting and Paraphrasing

• Introduce your quotes and paraphrases to your reader, especially on first reference.
• Explain the significance of the quote or paraphrase to your reader.
• Cite your quote or paraphrase properly according to the rules of style you are following in your essay.
• Quote when the exact words are important, when you want to highlight your agreement or your disagreement.
• Paraphrase when the exact words aren’t important, when you want to explain the point of your evidence, or when you need to balance the direct quotes in your writing.

Quoting in MLA Style

Paraphrasing in mla style, quoting in apa style, paraphrasing in apa style.

Lévy, Pierre.  Cyberculture.  Trans. Robert Bononno.  Minneapolis:  U of Minnesota P, 2001.

5 free plagiarism checkers for university students

Free plagiarism checkers are nifty tools for university students in the digital age. Why? Simply because passing off someone else’s work as your own is a serious offence in the academic community.

This is why students are encouraged to always attribute quotes, paraphrase borrowed ideas, and steer clear from copying entire sentences or paragraphs. Equally important is corroborating sources by cross-checking facts on reliable websites. Finally, running your work through a free plagiarism checker will determine if it is an original piece worthy of a good grade.

No better feeling than when the plagiarism result comes back like this 😌 pic.twitter.com/khx6cdV4zQ — sign & wonder 💡 (@mikeOI3) August 15, 2021

Why use a free plagiarism checker?

The rising prominence of technology in higher education has its pitfalls — one of them being plagiarism. In response, universities are forced to crack down on students who submit “stolen” work. Students caught plagiarising face real consequences including a failed grade or academic probation. It’s no wonder, then, that institutions like Oxford University have even introduced special courses to curb this academic crime.

Such courses teach students what plagiarism is, how to accurately cite other work in their essays, academic writing skills, and even paraphrasing. Yet sometimes, even if you don’t mean to copy, the final text ends up too similar to your references. That’s when a free plagiarism checker comes in handy.

Turnitin may be the popular plagiarism prevention software, but there are other free services that can help you check your work before submission. Here’s a look at five free plagiarism checkers for university students. Use them on all your assignments to maintain peace of mind — and good grades, of course.

Plagiarism checkers help students and teachers maintain a high standard of quality in university classes. Source: Ina Fassbender/AFP

It is typically used for English learning and writing, but did you know Grammarly also has a plagiarism checker? Simply copy a passage or upload a file to check your work against ProQuest databases and 16 billion web pages. You will also gain useful insights on punctuation, vocabulary, and sentence structure to improve your work.

Tap into this free plagiarism checker’s DeepSearch technology for contextual analysis on any subject matter. Quetext promises fast, accurate scanning while protecting the privacy of its users. Feedback includes colour-grading text based on the level of plagiarism and a comprehensive plagiarism score.

If you’re familiar with Turnitin, you can place your confidence in EasyBib — which claims to use similar technology. Beyond checking for plagiarism, this software will also provide suggestions to improve your grammar and style. Bonus: You may submit your paper for a 24-hour in-depth check, which involves detailed feedback from writing experts.

Unicheck compares your work against over 91 billion web sources and open access databases, so you can be sure it catches everything. Students will find the full-scale interactive report helpful; you can check similar sources and adjust citations and references. With its in-depth explanations and promise of 99% uptime, it’s no wonder this software is used by students and teachers alike. Even universities use it to check assessments.

Duplichecker

Another plagiarism checker that uses DeepSearch technology is Duplichecker, which offers a basic free version and a multifunctional pro version. Your results will show percentages of plagiarism, unique, and related-meaning sentences. To begin, copy texts of under 1,000 words or upload your document.

Scribber’s checker, developed in partnership with Turnitin, performs particularly well with sources that are relevant to students, such as journal articles and dissertations. It thrives in detecting plagiarism in heavily edited texts.

How do we detect plagiarism with the rise of ChatGPT?

ChatGPT and plagiarism — these two words are coming together more often recently.

The chatbot powered by artificial intelligence (AI) sounded alarm bells in education circles when it threatened to upend the authenticity of student essays.

While a plagiarism checker might not definitively determine whether a language model was used to generate a piece of text, it can help you identify instances of copying or paraphrasing from other sources.

In this, it can still be hard to detect plagiarism by an AI chatbot.

That’s because AI writing tools use natural language and grammar to craft “unique and almost individualised content,” even if the content is drawn from a database, according to Aaron Leong from  Digital Trends .

Still, it didn’t stop Turnitin, a popular free plagiarism checker used by educators and students worldwide from releasing new features to detect the use of AI writing tools.

According to the provider, these  features  can be found in Turnitin Feedback Studio (TFS), TFS with Originality, Turnitin Originality, Turnitin Similarity, Simcheck, Originality Check, and Originality Check+.

Currently, the new features on this platform have reportedly been able to detect the presence of AI writing with  98% confidence  and a less than one percent false-positive rate in Turnitin’s controlled lab environment.

Popular stories

He has adhd and was miserable in singapore until he moved to this country for university.

The Hun School of Princeton: The power of real-world, self-directed learning

I have ADHD and I graduated university with distinction. Here’s how I did it.

The oldest languages in the world are more than 100,000 years old

5 tips to successfully tackle your first academic essay

Free online citation tools university students shouldn't live without

5 basic tips to keep your academic scholarship

Bill Maher can’t see ‘what the big crime is’ in Harrison Butker’s speech

T alk show host Bill Maher mocked the outrage behind Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker 's commencement speech at Benedictine College.

Maher brought up the speech during the Friday episode of his show Real Time with Bill Maher . Butker spoke at the Catholic college last weekend as a member of the faith himself. He offered the comment that while some female graduates were excited about their future careers, there was a majority that was "most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”

"I can't express how much this guy is not like me. He's religious. He loves marriage. He loves kids … And he's now history's greatest monster," Maher said. "Again, I don't agree with much with this guy, but I don't get the thing."

Maher went on to quote Butker's speech, which he claimed appeared "modern." The talk show host did not venture to paraphrase Butker's comments on the “bad policies and poor leadership” during the coronavirus pandemic, Pride month being likened to a “deadly sin,” or premarital relations. However, when it came to the mention of women getting married and having children , Maher agreed that there is not "only one way to be a good person, and that's to get an advanced degree from one of those a**hole factories like Harvard." 

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

"I don't see what the big crime is. I really don't," Maher said. "And I think this is part of the problem people have with the left is that lots of people in this country are like this. Like he's saying some of you may go on to lead successful careers, but a lot of you are excited about this other way that people- everybody used to be. And now can't that be a choice too?"

Since the speech, Butker merchandise has become the “most popular in Kansas City Chiefs” merchandise per NFL.com . During this year's Super Bowl, Butker scored 13 points for his team, including one 57-yard field goal, which is the Super Bowl record distance. Butker has scored 37 points across four Super Bowls, which is the most ever for a kicker.