What Is Paraphrasing? Definition, Examples, and How to Paraphrase Step by Step

Paraphrasing sits between two other ways of using a source. Quoting repeats the source's exact wording inside quotation marks. Plagiarism presents someone else's idea or wording as if it were the writer's own. A paraphrase puts the whole idea into new words and new sentences, and still tells the reader whose idea it is.

A paraphrase keeps three things intact: the meaning of the source, roughly the same level of detail, and a citation back to where the idea came from. The wording and the way the sentences are built change. The substance of the claim does not.

The Purdue University Online Writing Lab defines a paraphrase as "your own rendition of essential information and ideas expressed by someone else, presented in a new form," and treats it as a legitimate way to borrow from a source only when it comes with accurate documentation.

On the page, the three can look alike. An instructor treats them very differently. The examples below quote an illustrative source, Diaz (2020), not a real study.

• Quoting: "Reading fiction before bed improves sleep quality for many adults because it lowers pre-sleep anxiety more effectively than scrolling a phone" (Diaz, 2020, p. 112).
• Paraphrasing: Diaz (2020) found that a bedtime reading habit, specifically reading fiction rather than using a phone, helped many adults sleep better, largely because it reduced anxiety before sleep more than screen use did (p. 112).
• Uncredited copying: Reading fiction before bed improves sleep quality for many adults because it lowers pre-sleep anxiety more effectively than scrolling a phone. No quotation marks, no citation, and the wording is the source's own.

Purdue's Online Writing Lab lists six steps and Dublin City University's Writing Centre lists seven. Both move in the same order, from understanding the passage to citing it. The five steps below follow that order.

1. Read the passage until you can explain it without looking.
2. Note the technical terms, names and numbers that must stay as they are.
3. Put the source away and write the idea in your own sentence structure.
4. Compare your version with the original. The meaning should match and the structure should not. Revise any sentence that still follows the source.
5. Add the citation, with a page number if your style guide or instructor asks for one.

If the exact wording matters, quote it instead. How to paraphrase a quote explains when each one fits.

Step 3 is where these techniques come in. Each row applies one of them to a sentence invented for this guide.

Good paraphrases combine several techniques. The Dublin City University Writing Centre lists synonyms, a change of word class and a change of word order as basic techniques. It warns that "none of these techniques on their own constitute effective paraphrasing." The synonym row shows why. After the swap, the sentence keeps the source's structure, which is the word-swapping mistake described below.

A single sentence is the easy case. The real test is a full paragraph, because it is easy to restructure the first sentence and then quietly follow the source for the rest.

Source passage (illustrative example): "Social media platforms are designed to hold a user's attention for as long as possible. Features like infinite scrolling, autoplay, and personalized recommendation feeds remove the natural stopping points that used to end a browsing session, such as reaching the last page of a newspaper or the end of a TV program. As a result, many people report losing track of time while using these platforms, even when they intended to check them for only a few minutes." (Chen, 2021, p. 44)

Paraphrasing a whole paragraph

Break the paragraph into its claims and note each one in a few words. Then write the paragraph from those notes, in the order your own reasoning needs. Chen's passage makes three claims:

1. Aim: keep people on the platform as long as possible.
2. Mechanism: endless feeds, autoplay and tailored recommendations remove old stopping points.
3. Effect: many users say they lose track of time, even on visits meant to be short.

The Dublin City University guide advises paraphrasing "the paragraph or section as a whole, not sentence by sentence." Writing from the notes, not from the source's sentences, is how you get there.

Paraphrase, genuinely restructured: According to Chen (2021), several design choices work together to keep people scrolling long after they meant to stop. Infinite feeds and autoplay remove the natural endpoints that older media had, such as the last page of a newspaper or the credits of a show, while recommendation algorithms keep surfacing content tailored to whatever already held the user's attention. The result, Chen argues, is that users often lose track of how long they have been on a platform, even when they intended only a short visit (p. 44).

Look at what moved. The source opens with the platforms; the paraphrase opens with Chen and the overall claim. The recommendation algorithms get a clause of their own, joined with "while," and the conclusion arrives through a different link ("The result, Chen argues" instead of "As a result"). Chen is credited from the first sentence to the page number, because every idea in the paragraph still belongs to Chen.

A word-swapped paraphrase of that same paragraph looks more like this:

"Social media platforms are built to keep a user's focus for as long as possible. Features such as endless scrolling, autoplay, and customized recommendation feeds eliminate the natural stopping points that used to end a browsing session, like reaching the final page of a newspaper or the end of a TV show."

Each sentence follows the source clause for clause, with a thesaurus run over the vocabulary. The name for this is patchwriting: the source's wording is cut up and reassembled with light synonym changes instead of being genuinely restated. As one college library guide puts it, patchwriting is "essentially inadequate paraphrase or summary." The same guide still counts it as plagiarism, though not necessarily as dishonesty. No sentence has to be copied word for word. The source's structure and reasoning are still there after the vocabulary changes.

• Change the sentence order, not just individual words. If your sentence follows the source's clauses in the same order, swapping in synonyms is not enough.
• When a sentence still mirrors the source, cover the original and write that sentence again from memory instead of editing it word by word.
• Put any phrase you can't avoid repeating in quotation marks, and cite the source either way.

Yes. Taking away the quotation marks does not take away the citation. New wording doesn't make someone else's idea yours, and the source still gets credit for the thinking.

MLA and APA treat quoting and paraphrasing the same way on this point. The MLA Style Center requires a location marker in parentheses when you quote or paraphrase a specific part of a source that has a page number, line number or similar locator. APA also requires a citation. The APA in-text citation guide from Kwantlen Polytechnic University Library cites a paraphrase with the author and date. It adds that some instructors also ask for the specific part of the source.

For the citation formats themselves (narrative versus parenthetical, page numbers, and paraphrases that run across several sentences), see How to cite a paraphrase.

An AI rewriting tool can help with the restructuring step. It can rebuild sentences, combine or split them, and vary the wording while the claim stays the same. The Certentis Humanizer is built to keep citations, URLs, DOIs and footnote markers intact.

A rewriting tool does not change what has to be credited, and it cannot decide which sentences need a citation. That decision is the writer's. If the meaning still comes from the source, the citation stays. Try the Certentis Humanizer on your own draft, or check a finished paragraph for uncredited overlap with the plagiarism checker.