How to Paraphrase a Quote, and When to Quote, Paraphrase, or Summarize

Ask three questions about the passage, in this order, and stop at the first yes.

The first question follows APA's guidance on quotations. It states that "it is best to paraphrase sources rather than directly quoting them" and names three cases for quoting: an exact definition, something an author said memorably or succinctly, and wording you respond to. Newcastle University's Academic Skills Kit adds one more. When you critique a source, readers need the original to be sure you have not misrepresented it. The same page notes that technical terms from the shared language of your discipline need no quotation marks.

The 66-word passage below was written for this guide. Reyes (2019) is a made-up book, not a real source.

Source passage, Reyes (2019, p. 87): "Street trees are not decoration; they are infrastructure. On a hot afternoon, a fully shaded block can be several degrees cooler at street level than an unshaded block nearby, and the people who feel that difference most are those with no air conditioning to retreat to. Yet cities that budget for trees as beautification tend to plant where complaints are loudest, not where heat is worst."

The quotation keeps one sentence and nothing else. The paraphrase carries all three ideas and runs slightly shorter than the source, as Purdue OWL describes a typical paraphrase. The summary drops the details and keeps the argument. For summarizing a whole text, see How to Summarize an Article.

Say your draft quotes the middle sentence of the Reyes passage:

"On a hot afternoon, a fully shaded block can be several degrees cooler at street level than an unshaded block nearby, and the people who feel that difference most are those with no air conditioning to retreat to" (Reyes, 2019, p. 87).

1. Read the context. Know what the sentence does in the author's argument. Here it is evidence that trees are infrastructure.
2. State the meaning in one sentence, with the source closed. Shade cools streets, and people who cannot cool their homes benefit most.
3. Rebuild it in a new structure. The original opens with the temperature and ends with the people. Open with the people instead: According to Reyes (2019), residents without air conditioning gain the most from tree shade: on a hot afternoon, street-level temperatures under a full canopy can drop several degrees below those of a sunny street close by.
4. Check it against the original. Meaning first: the hedge "can" survives, and nothing new is claimed. Then wording: "on a hot afternoon" came through word for word, so it becomes "in afternoon heat." "Air conditioning" can stay, because no other term says the same thing. Wingspan, the University of Kansas writing support center, notes that key words such as names and field terminology may stay the same. For the point where a close rewrite becomes plagiarism, see Is Paraphrasing Plagiarism?.
5. Cite it. Keep the author and year, and add the page when your style or instructor asks for it.

Result: According to Reyes (2019), residents without air conditioning gain the most from tree shade: in afternoon heat, street-level temperatures under a full canopy can drop several degrees below those of a sunny street close by (p. 87).

Sometimes a single phrase says something no paraphrase can match. In the Reyes passage, that is the closing contrast. Paraphrase the rest of the sentence and quote only that phrase:

Reyes (2019) argues that cities funding trees as a cosmetic expense tend to "plant where complaints are loudest, not where heat is worst" (p. 87).

The UNC Writing Center advises quoting as few words as possible and, at times, a short fragment instead of a whole sentence. A partial quotation follows the same rules as a full one:

• The words inside the quotation marks match the source exactly.
• If you change a word to fit your grammar, put the changed word in square brackets.
• Mark a gap inside the quoted words with an ellipsis, and make sure the cut does not change the meaning. APA says not to add an ellipsis at the start or end of a quotation.
• Give the page number, because part of the sentence is a direct quotation.

Turning a quotation into a paraphrase removes the quotation marks, not the citation. The idea still belongs to the author.

The APA column follows APA's pages on paraphrases and quotations. The MLA column follows the MLA Style Center. For narrative and parenthetical formats and for paraphrases that run over several sentences, see How to Cite a Paraphrase.

A paper built mostly from quotations reads as a string of other people's voices, and the reader can't tell what the writer thinks. The UNC Writing Center says that packing a paper with quotations "will not necessarily strengthen your argument" and that most of the paper should be your own ideas in your own words. APA adds that published authors paraphrase most of the time and that students should paraphrase more than they quote. The balance varies by field. UNC notes that literature papers may rely heavily on quotation, while social science papers may use more paraphrase and data.

1. Mark every quotation in the draft.
2. Run each through the three-question test. Paraphrase or summarize every one whose exact wording does not matter.
3. Cut long quotations down to the phrase that carries the point.
4. Frame each remaining quotation with a sentence of your own before and after it. Newcastle's rule of thumb: the longer the quotation, the more you should have to say about it.
5. Check that every converted passage still carries its citation.

Once you have a paraphrase draft, the Certentis Humanizer can suggest other wording for it. It is built to keep citations and claims intact. It needs at least 100 characters, so paste the whole paragraph. Treat the output as a suggestion. Check it against the source for meaning and against your draft for every citation, then repeat the wording check from step 4.