As a writer, you need to paraphrase your or other people's thoughts very often. But the question is how to do that correctly without sliding into pure plagiarism?

A paraphrase (or paraphrasing) is an essential communication tool that enables us to retell another piece of writing using new words or phrases while maintaining the original idea.

When you think about it, paraphrasing is not very difficult, but search engines place a high value on the originality and credibility of your material. 

However, this is exactly where you can easily fall into the trap and get penalized, unless you learn to paraphrase properly.

In today's article, we'll explain what paraphrasing is, the fundamental benefits of this writing technique, and teach you how to paraphrase in the correct way.

Stay tuned!

What Is Paraphrasing? 

Paraphrasing is a form of writing that allows us to provide support for our claims by mentioning authoritative sources.

In this method, we take a passage from a book, article, or citation and rewrite it in our own words while preserving the author's original intent.

As they are not direct quotes, paraphrases do not need to be enclosed in quotation marks.

Benefits of Paraphrasing

Some people may ask, "What is the purpose of paraphrasing" when you can use quotations and cite the original pieces of text.

There's a simple explanation for this — quoting isn't always the best option when it comes to writing

Furthermore, why quote three or four paragraphs when a shorter version will do the same job of supporting your position?

Paraphrasing is useful in many situations because of its many advantages. Here are some of the most common scenarios in which paraphrasing proves useful.

  • Allows you to tweak your wording — When paraphrasing, you are allowed to provide personal writing style, while preserving the original idea of the message.
  • Enables you to switch the subject — If you like the style of the original passage but need to adapt it to a different topic, paraphrasing is an excellent method to have at your disposal.
  • Helps you avoid plagiarism — In order to use someone else's idea, you must not use exact words if you want to avoid plagiarism. Paraphrasing is a useful technique to do that in the right way.
  • Keeps use of quotation marks to a minimum — While it is important to give credit where credit is due, there are two main reasons why too many quotations can actually weaken your article:
  • Because of this, your reader may conclude that you lack sufficient knowledge to adequately address the issue at hand. 
  • Sometimes it can be overwhelming.
  • Communicates the message in a way that is easy to understand — Some pieces offer too many problematic words that people might find too complex to understand. This can affect the level of readability and clarity of your article (both relevant factors for success of your content).  With paraphrasing, you can simplify the complexity of your paragraphs while still keeping the original idea intact.
  • Shortens lengthy text — Paraphrasing is a great tool for shortening lengthy pieces of text. To get your point across quickly, you can paraphrase the original text more efficiently.

How To Do Paraphrasing Properly?

Before diving into the nuts and bolts of paraphrasing, it's important to note that the information presented here is meant solely to improve your writing. 

Remember that paraphrasing is not a foolproof method for stealing someone else's work without raising suspicions of plagiarism.

If you are interested in figuring out the difference between paraphrasing and plagiarism, make sure to check our article on how to avoid plagiarism and keep your content unique.

For a better understanding of the steps, in the rest of the article, we’ll be using the same quote as an example of how to paraphrase properly:

“Stay away from those people who try to disparage your ambitions. Small minds will always do that, but great minds will give you a feeling that you can become great too.” — Mark Twain

Now let’s jump into business!

1. Use Different Synonyms

It's probably happened more than once that you just couldn't find the motivation to write and came up with a sentence that was unclear and sounded weak and uninteresting. 

By paraphrasing, you can use a wider variety of synonyms, increasing the text's appeal and making its meaning clearer.

You can give your context a more refined sound, for example, by employing synonyms and antonyms for particular words:

Now, if we take our example, paraphrasing with different synonyms on the original text would look something like this:

Original text: “Stay away from those people who try to disparage your ambitions. Small minds will always do that, but great minds will give you a feeling that you can become great too.” 

Paraphrasing with different synonyms: "Stay away from those who try to discredit your objectives." Small brains will always do this, but great minds will make you believe that you, too, may become great."

This form of paraphrasing, however, is responsible just for enhancing your work.

If you want to avoid having search engines flag your work as plagiarized, you'll need to be careful about the sequence of words when citing quotes.

For example, TextCortex has an AI-powered rewriting extension that  comes in quite helpful when you need to paraphrase anything for a different context without sacrificing the meaning.

All you need to do is to highlight a sentence or paragraph you want to rewrite, click on the logo, and choose the ‘Paraphrasing’ feature.

2. Change Wording Order For Better Readability

The order of your words has a significant impact on the final product. And as we've already shown, the order of words counts when attempting to paraphrase someone else's work.

Explaining the message in your own words will help you convey it more clearly and concisely.

Take care to paraphrase in your unique writing style, just as no two persons can tell the same tale in exactly the same manner.

Back to the example.

Original text: “Stay away from those people who try to disparage your ambitions. Small minds will always do that, but great minds will give you a feeling that you can become great too.” 

Paraphrasing with different wording order: "Avoid those who attempt to discredit your aspirations. Small minds will always do that, but great minds will inspire you to strive for greatness as well.

3. Shorten Your Paragraphs For Better Clarity

When we say paraphrasing, the first thing that comes to mind is the rewriting process. However, paraphrasing goes way beyond that process.

For example, if you have an unnecessarily long sentence or paragraph, wouldn’t it be better to shorten it and address the main idea in a more concise way?

Not only this paraphrasing method will help you communicate your ideas more efficiently, but will also help your readers easily digest your content.

Here is how the shortening of paragraphs looks like in our example.

Original text: “Stay away from those people who try to disparage your ambitions. Small minds will always do that, but great minds will give you a feeling that you can become great too.” 

Shorten paragraph:Avoid critics of your ambitions. Small brains will always do that, but great minds will inspire you to be great too.”

Most well-equipped paraphrasing tools, such as TextCortex, allow you to shorten pieces of text listed in their paraphrasing arsenal.

To simplify your sentences and paragraphs with TextCortex, select the piece of text, click on the  logo and choose the ‘Summarize’ button.

4. Extend Your Sentences For More Information

Conversely to the previous step, certain statements demand more than just a quick information.

Sounds confusing? Probably does, but let me explain to you why.

For instance, if you want to explain someone’s behavior, you can say “Charlie behaves particularly moody today.”

But, how much does that truly tell us? Not much, right?

And from the perspective of a reader, this sentence is excessively unclear. Expanding words in this scenario lets us provide more information about the subject and describe what “moody” really implies.

So, we could do that by spicing up a bit and say “Charlie acts in a very irritable manner today.” Better?

Now, lets see how we can apply this paraphrasing method in our example.

Original text: “Stay away from those people who try to disparage your ambitions. Small minds will always do that, but great minds will give you a feeling that you can become great too.” 

Extended version of original text: "Stay away from those individuals who are always trying to put down your achievements and goals. This will always be the case with small minds, but being around great minds will give you the impression that you, too, have the potential to become great.”

TextCortex and other similar AI-powered rewriting tools now have expansion features that might help you make the most of your writing.

To easily extend your sentences with TextCortex, select the desirable portion of the text, click on the logo, and select the ‘Expand’ feature.

It can also help you expand your ideas when you’re not into mood to write at the moment, or if the topic you're writing about is not that familiar to you.

TextCortex adds up an expert understanding to your sentences which helps you increase authority.

5. Change The Tone Of Voice

The strength of a piece of writing is in its tone of voice, which can change the reader's reaction to the same piece of text.

There are now a wide variety of voice tones that you can use to communicate effectively, such as:

  • Formal
  • Casual
  • Friendly
  • Respectful
  • Encouraging
  • Detailed
  • And much more.

As before, this can be a huge pain to do by hand, but rewriting software like TextCortex makes short work of it.

We’ll now show you how to rewrite examples of original text in numerous different tones of voice. 

Original text: “Stay away from those people who try to disparage your ambitions. Small minds will always do that, but great minds will give you a feeling that you can become great too.” 

Formal tone of voice: “Stay away from those people who try to discourage you from achieving your goals. Small minds will always do that, but great minds will give you a feeling that you can achieve anything.

Friendly tone of voice: “Stay away from those people who try to put you down. They will only make you feel small and insignificant. But remember, great minds don’t disparage themselves – they know that greatness is within reach.”

Urgent tone of voice: “If you ever feel disparaged by others because of your ambitions, remember that great minds have always done great things. Don't let small minds get in the way of your dreams.”

To change the tone of voice using TextCortex, same like with other features, select the sentence or paragraphs, click on the logo and choose the ‘Tone’ option.

To Wrap Up

Paraphrasing, as you can see, is the offspring of the writing process. And when you think about it, you use this technique on a daily basis in your verbal interactions without realizing it, right?

However, as we warned, good paraphrasing is essential to avoid plagiarizing when writing articles. Thus it is critical to learn to do paraphrasing properly.

But, why learn to do it manually when there are tried-and-true rewriting tools available? 

TextCortex, for instance, can alter your content on the spot even on your worst writing day (we all have them).

And there is more. By utilizing TextCortex, not only will you gain access to Chrome extension rewriting features, but you also have access to:

  • 20+ AI templates within web application
  • Multilingual AI generator (generate content in 72+ languages)
  • Editable canvas that allows simultaneous AI-generating and manual writing
  • Editing and formatting content in real-time
  • Personal AI writing assistant on 30+ online platforms like Docs, Gmail, LinkedIn, and more
  • Dashboard where you can save your projects for future use.

Tempting enough to give it a try?

Download the TextCortex Chrome extension now to explore the entertaining side of paraphrasing.