Paraphrase

A paraphrase is a restatement in your own words of the ideas in the original. The most common strategy to accomplish this involves replacing words in the source with synonyms and changing the grammar. Look at this sentence.

The meetings tourism market has been vigorously pursued by many former industrial cities in Europe and the U.S. as part of their strategies of post-industrial urban regeneration.

A full paraphrase of this could be

Many cities in the U.S. and Europe that once relied on heavy industry are now trying to revitalize themselves by deceloping a meetings tourism industry.

Note here that the language has completely changed, although the sense of the original is fully maintained. A paraphrase approach to summarizing can be somewhat successful, but if you do this sentence by sentence, you run the risk of not demonstrating your full understanding of the passage. You might miss an opportunity to highlight key points. Another possible danger is that the resulting summary may not be original enough and could be considered plagiarism by some.

Some students attempt to paraphrase by following a simple substitution approach. However, this approach definitely has risks. If we take the above sentence and paraphrase using synonyms, we may get something like the following.

*The meetings tourism industry has been energetically sought by several historically industrial cities in Europe and the U.S. as one element of their plan of post-industrial metropolitan rebuilding.

This paraphrase is somewhat difficult to understand. For one, seek does not have the same meaning as pursue. While an industry can be pursued in English, it generally cannot be sought. For another, historically does not give the sense that these cities are no longer industrial cities. Finally, the phrase metropolitan rebuilding requires some effort to understand because the common term in this context is urban, as in the original.

If you (understandably) feel that your paraphrasing ability is not so strong, you can copy some material and place it in quotation marks; however, a better but more difficult strategy would be to carefully consider the elements you have identified as important, put the original away, and write down what you have understood. This may allow you to condense the ideas in the source even further. When you write a formal summary of someone else's ideas, you should keep in mind the following guidelines.

• Always try to use your own words, except for technical terms.
• Include enough support and detail so the your text is clear.
• Do not try to paraphrase specialized vocabulary.
• Focus on the content of the original.
• Make sure the summary reads smoothly. Use enough transition devices and supporting detail. You do not want a collection of ideas that do not flow.