To paraphrase, follow the steps below:
Even if you paraphrase or put something into your own words, you still need to cite the original source. To avoid plagiarizing someone else words or ideas, make sure you:
As you compose your notecards, be alert to the different strategies in notetaking: summary, paraphrase, direct quotation. If you decide you need the exact phrasing of the original, copy it word for word and label it as a DIRECT quotation clearly. If you want the idea within the original, consider writing a paraphrase note, with some key phrases quoted directly. Here’s an example of one:
In More’s Utopia, Hythloday describes at length what constitutes “bodily pleasure” for these citizens. He argues that “when a person’s health is not disturbed by any disease,” that person exists in a “peaceful and desirable” state which may represent to the Utopians the highest form of “pleasure.” This may seem contradictory to some, who assume pleasure consists in an abundance of money or property. (88)
The reason that you can tell this is an actual paraphrase is that it’s written in the writer’s own, modern English, and the sentence structure does not mirror that of the original. The key phrases are clearly shown as direct quotations with quotation marks, and the writer has included the page number of the source where the information was found.
