Summarizing and Paraphrasing Successfully
Summarizing and Paraphrasing Successfully
Successful and Unsuccessful Examples
The following successful and unsuccessful paraphrases are based on the paragraph below. The first two paraphrases after the original passage demonstrates two improper ways of handling source material: (1) word-for-word plagiarism and (2) cut-and-paste plagiarism. Finally, the last example provides a model of a successful paraphrase. Each paraphrase is followed by an explanation of its strengths or weaknesses.
The Original Paragraph:
The linguistic criticism of Nineteen Eighty-Four has focused primarily on Newspeak as a language and on Orwell's ideas about the relationship between language and thought. It has largely ignored, however, the literary language Orwell used in writing Nineteen Eighty-Four. Indeed, the few critical remarks about Orwell's use of language have generally been negative — sometimes attributing the dull, monotonous, dry writing style to Orwell's career as a journalist or to the phlegmatic topic of his novel. Irving Howe, for example, writes that
the style of 1984, which many readers take to be drab or uninspired or sweaty, would have been appreciated by someone like Defoe, since Defoe would have immediately understood how the pressures of Orwell's subject, like the pressures of his own, demand a gritty and hammering factuality. The style of 1984 is the style of a man whose commitment to a dreadful vision is at war with the nausea to which that vision reduces him. So acute is this conflict that delicacies of phrasing or displays of rhetoric come to seem frivolous — he has no time, he must get it all down. Those who fail to see this, I am convinced, have succumbed to the pleasant tyrannies of estheticism; they have allowed their fondness for a cultivated style to blind them to the urgencies of prophetic expression. The last thing Orwell cared about when he wrote 1984, the last thing he should have cared about, was literature.
I believe those critical responses to Orwell — including Howe's defense of his style — are wrong.
(from "The Uses of Passivity, " Daniel Kies, 229)
Two Unsuccessful Paraphrases:
|1. Word-for-word Plagiarism | |
| | |
|The linguistic criticism of Nineteen Eighty-Four | |
|focuses mostly on Newspeak as a language and on | |
|Orwell's ideas about language and thought. The few | |
|critical remarks about Orwell's use of language have | |
|been bad, claiming that his poor writing style was due | |
|to Orwell's career as a journalist or the topic of his | |
|novel. Only the critic Irving Howe felt that Orwell's | |
|style appreciated by someone like Defoe. Kies believes | |
|all those critics are wrong. | |
| | |
The red words are directly copied from the source. Notice that the writer has not only "borrowed" the original's ideas with no acknowledgment, he or she has maintained the author's method of expression and sentence structure. Even if the writer had acknowledged the source of these ideas, this passage would still be plagiarized because much of its exact wording comes from the original with no quotation marks to indicate that the language is the original's. It's not that using a single phrase such as "appreciated by someone like Defoe" without quotation marks constitutes plagiarism; it's the repeated use of exact wording and sentence structure without any quotation marks.
Placing quotation marks around all material directly taken from the original would make this paragraph so cluttered as to be unreadable. If a writer likes the ideas and the wording of the original this much, if it is important to the paper, and if it is stated more concisely in the original than it would be in a paraphrase or summary, then quote the original. Otherwise, paraphrase.
|2. Cut-and-paste Plagiarism |In the second example, the "cut-and-paste" plagiarism example, note the |
| |red phrases which have been borrowed from the original and shifted around.|
|Most critics who discuss the language of 1984 either focus|The original's structure has been modified to a certain extent by the |
|primarily on Newspeak as a language or Orwell's ideas |writer, but numerous key phrases have been retained without quotation |
|about the relationship between language and thought. The |marks, and the source has not been credited. |
|few who describe the novel's writing style have a negative| |
|reaction. They argue that its dreary style is a product of| |
|Orwell's career as a journalist or the phlegmatic topic of| |
|his novel. Even one critic's defense of Orwell's style | |
|seems wrong. | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
|A Legitimate Paraphrase: | |
|An Example of a Good Paraphrase |In the example of a legitimate paraphrase, the original ideas and specific|
| |language have been documented (by direct references to the author, by |
|In "The Uses of Passivity," Kies argues that the critic's |citations to his article, and by quotation marks where specific language |
|reactions to Orwell's writing style in 1984 is wrong. Most|has been used). Notice too that the original language and structure have |
|critics charge that the novel's style is dry and lifeless,|been modified to fit this summary's own purpose. |
|attributing this either to Orwell's career as a journalist| |
|or to the novel's dreary topic. Even one critic's modest | |
|defense of Orwell's style strikes Kies as weak (229). | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
Paraphrasing
A Definition
Paraphrasing is the use of another’s ideas to enhance your own work. In a paraphrase, you rewrite in your own words the ideas taken from the source. Paraphrases avoid excessive reliance on quotations and demonstrate that you understand the source author’s argument. A paraphrase always has a different sentence structure and word choice. When done well, it is much more concise than the original. Good writers signal paraphrases through clauses such as “Werner Sollors, in Beyond Ethnicity, argues that….” These phrases indicate the source of the paraphrase and help integrate the borrowed ideas into your own work. Because a paraphrase is your restatement of a borrowed idea, it is not set within quotation marks. Though the ideas may be borrowed, your writing must be original; simply changing a few words or rearranging words or sentences is not paraphrasing. In fact, it’s plagiarism, a severe academic offense that can result in expulsion from the university.
Proper Citation
Remember that paraphrases, just like direct quotations, must be cited. While the words may be your own, the ideas are still borrowed, and you must acknowledge your source. Consult your instructor, a UWC consultant, a UWC handout on documentation, or a relevant handbook if you have questions about how to cite your sources. The following examples use MLA style.
Note taking and Paraphrasing
Good note-taking can improve your paraphrases. When taking notes, do not copy words from a source unless you intend to quote that source. Rather, read carefully, think, and then write, in your own words, the main ideas you have read. Be sure to note the source for proper citation. Skipping the note-taking step and paraphrasing directly from a source into your draft limits your ability to think through the ideas and increases the risk that you will commit negligent plagiarism. Use note taking to develop and organize your own ideas.
The Wrong Way to Paraphrase #1: Failure to Cite Source
Original Passage: “They desire, for example, virtue and the absence of vice, no less really than pleasure and the absence of pain.”
Source: Mill, John Stuart. “Utilitarianism.” On Liberty and Other Essays. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1998. Quote is from page 169.
Paraphrase: People want morality just as much as they want happiness.
Explanation: This paraphrase is an accurate summary of the above passage, but is incorrectly paraphrased because it does not cite the source of its main ideas. The author of this paraphrase has plagiarized the ideas of another.
[pic]
Undergraduate Writing Center, The University of Texas at Austin
UWC website: uwc.fac.utexas.edu
Handout created by Matthew Hedstrom
Last revised by Shelley Powers, July 2006
The Wrong Way to Paraphrase #2: Lack of Significant Rewording
Original Passage: “To the young American architects who made the pilgrimage, the most dazzling figure of all was Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus School. Gropius opened the Bauhaus in Weimar, the German capital, in 1919. It was more than a school; it was a commune, a spiritual movement, a radical approach to art in all its forms, a philosophical center comparable to the Garden of Epicurus.”
Source: Wolfe, Tom. From Bauhaus to Our House. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1981. Quote is from
page 10.
Paraphrase: As Tom Wolfe notes, to young American architects who went to Germany, the most dazzling figure was Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus School (10). Gropius opened the Bauhaus in the German capital of Weimar in 1919. It was, however, more than a school; it was a commune, a spiritual movement, a philosophical center like the Garden of Epicurus.
Explanation: This excerpt is not a paraphrase at all; it is too similar to the source. Rather than summarizing the ideas, it uses the same words and structure as the original. This author has committed plagiarism by misrepresenting another’s work as his own.
The Right Way to Paraphrase
Original Passage: “The Republican Convention of 1860, which adopted planks calling for a tariff, internal improvements, a Pacific railroad and a homestead law, is sometimes seen as a symbol of Whig triumph within the party. A closer look, however, indicates that the Whig’s triumph within the party was of a very tentative nature.”
Source: Foner, Eric. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970. Quote is from page 175.
Paraphrase: Contrary to many historians, Eric Foner argues that the Republican platform of 1860 should not be understood as an indication of Whig dominance of the party (175).
Explanation: This paraphrase is properly cited and represents an accurate and concise summary of the source
Examples of paraphrasing: Good and Bad
The ethical writer takes great care to insure that any paraphrased text is sufficiently modified so as to be judged as new writing. Let’s consider various paraphrased versions of the following material on the electrochemical properties of neurons (taken from Martini & Bartholomew, 1997). In acknowledging the source, we will use the footnote method commonly used in the biomedical sciences. The actual reference would appear in the reference section of the paper.
“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.”¹ (p. 204).
Here is an Appropriate Paraphrase of the above material:
A textbook of anatomy and physiology¹ 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. Their concentration outside of the cell causes sodium ions to cross the membrane into the cell, but they do so at a slower rate. According to these authors, this is because the permeability of the cell membrane is such that it favors the movement of potassium relative to sodium ions. Because the rate of crossing for potassium ions that exit the cell is higher than that for sodium ions that enter the cell, the inside portion of the cell is left with an overload of negatively charged particles, namely, proteins that contain a negative charge.
Notice that, in addition to thoroughly changing much of the language and some of the structure of the original paragraph, the paraphrase also indicates, as per guideline 5, that the ideas contained in the rewritten version were taken from another source. When we paraphrase and/or summarize others’ work we must also give them due credit, a rule not always applied by inexperienced writers.
Let’s suppose that instead of paraphrasing, we decide to summarize the above paragraph from Martini and Bartholomew. Here is one summarized version of that paragraph:
The interior of a cell maintains a negative charge because more potassium ions exit the cell relative to sodium ions that enter it, leaving an over abundance of negatively charged protein inside of the cell.¹
In their attempts at paraphrasing, sometimes authors commit ‘near plagiarism’ (or plagiarism, depending on who is doing the judging) because they fail to sufficiently modify the original text and thus, produce an inappropriately paraphrased version. Depending on the extent of modifications to the original, the extent of text involved, and on who is doing the judging, inappropriate paraphrasing may constitute an instance of plagiarism. For example, the following versions of the Martini and Bartholomew paragraph are inappropriately paraphrased and can thus be classified as plagiarized versions:
Inappropriate paraphrase (version 1):
Because the intracellular concentration of potassium ions is _ high, potassium ions tend to diffuse out of the cell. 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 to it is to sodium ions. As a result, potassium ions diffuse out of the cell more rapidly than sodium ions enter the cytoplasm. The cell therefore experiences a _ loss of positive charges, and as a result the interior of the cell membrane contains a surplus of negative charges, primarily from negatively charged proteins.¹ (p. 204).
A comparison between the original version of the Martini and Bartholomew paragraph to the ‘rewritten’ version above reveals that the rewritten version is a mere copy of the original. The few modifications that were made are superficial, consisting merely of a couple of word deletions, substitutions, and additions. Even though by the insertion of a reference note (¹) the writer has credited Martini and Bartholomew with the ideas expressed, most of the words and structure of the original paragraph are preserved in the rewritten version. Therefore, the reader would have been misled as to the origin of the writing.
Inappropriate paraphrase (version 2):
The concentration gradient for sodium (Na) ions tends to promote their movement into the cell. Similarly, the high intracellular concentration of potassium (K) ions is relatively high resulting in K’s tendency to diffuse out of the cell. Because the cell membrane is significantly more permeable to K than to Na, K diffuses out of the cell faster than Na enter the cytoplasm. The cell therefore experiences a net loss of positive charges and, as a result the interior of the cell membrane now has an excess of negative charges, primarily from negatively charged proteins.¹ (p. 204).
At first glance this second ‘rewritten’ version may look as if it has been significantly modified from the original, but in reality, it is not unlike the first inappropriately paraphrased version in that only superficial changes have been made to the original. In this particular case, the writer has made a seemingly disingenuous change by substituting the names of the atoms by using their chemical symbols (e.g., sodium = Na). In addition, the order of the first two sentences was changed giving the appearance of a substantial modification. However, as in the previous version, the language and much of the rest of structure is still too similar to the original.
Again, it must be emphasized that when we paraphrase we must make every effort to restate the ideas in our words. Here is another properly paraphrased version:
Appropriate paraphrase (version 2):
The relatively high concentration gradient of sodium ions outside of the cell causes them to enter into the cell’s cytoplasm. In a similar fashion, the interior concentration gradient of potassium ions is also high and, therefore, potassium ions tend to scatter out of the cell through the cell’s membrane. But, a notable feature of this process is that Potassium ions tend to leave the cell faster than sodium ions enter the cytoplasm. This is because of the nature of the cell membrane’s permeability, which allows potassium ions to cross much more freely than sodium ions. The end result is that the interior of the cell membrane’s loss of positive charges results in a greater proportion of negative charges and these made up mostly of proteins that have acquired a negative charge.¹
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