Paraphrasing, quoting and summarising

When should you quote, paraphrase or summarise?

Scholars often ask how to paraphrase when the better question is whether to paraphrase at all. Most of the time, in a literature review, you should be summarising or synthesising instead.

A useful rule: the closer you stay to one source, the more likely you are to copy its wording without meaning to. Summaries and syntheses force you to write in your own structure, because no single source has the structure you need.

Quoting well

Keep quotations short and make them do work. A quotation should be followed by something you say about it: why it matters, what it assumes, how your study uses or tests it. A quotation dropped in with no comment reads as filler.

Each style has its own rule for long quotations. APA 7 sets quotations of 40 words or more as an indented block without quotation marks. MLA sets off prose quotations longer than four lines. Chicago uses block quotations for roughly 100 words or more. Your university may have its own rule, so check the thesis guidelines. The citation styles guide compares the styles.

How do you paraphrase properly?

The method below is slower than swapping words, but it is the only one that works, and it gets faster with practice.

1. 1

   Read until you understand

   Read the passage, and enough around it, to explain it to a colleague without looking.

2. 2

   Close the source

   Put the paper away or switch windows. You cannot paraphrase with the original in view.

3. 3

   Write from memory

   Write the idea as you would explain it, in your own sentence structure, for your own purpose.

4. 4

   Compare and check

   Reopen the source. Check the meaning is right and no distinctive phrase has slipped through.

5. 5

   Cite

   Add the citation, with a page number if your style asks for one. A paraphrase still needs a citation.

The second step is the one scholars skip. With the source open, your sentence will follow its sentence. With the source closed, you have to rebuild the idea, and it comes out in your structure.

Paraphrase for your purpose, not the author’s

The original author wrote the passage to make their point. You are using it to make yours. That usually means you need only part of it, and you will frame it differently: as evidence for your argument, as a contrast, as a method you borrowed.

What you can keep

You do not have to change everything. Keep technical terms (“structural equation modelling”, “intention to use”), names of scales and models, standard names of statistical tests, and proper nouns. Replacing “Cronbach’s alpha” with a synonym doesn’t help. The checker will match these short terms, and that is fine; examiners know the difference.

A worked example: patchwriting versus paraphrase

Here is a short passage we wrote for this example, as if it came from a published study.

Among the 412 teachers surveyed, those who had received at least 30 hours of training in digital tools reported significantly higher confidence in online teaching, but the difference in actual use of such tools in class was small, suggesting that confidence alone does not translate into changed practice.

Patchwriting (not acceptable): Of the 412 teachers who were surveyed, the ones who had got a minimum of 30 hours of digital tool training showed considerably greater confidence in teaching online, but the gap in real use of these tools in the classroom was minor, which suggests confidence by itself does not convert into changed practice (Author, Year).

It has a citation, yet it is still a problem. The sentence structure is the original’s, clause for clause, with synonyms slotted in. The writing researcher Rebecca Moore Howard called this “patchwriting”. A checker may miss it if enough words change, but an examiner who knows the source will not. Some synonyms also shift the meaning (“significantly” is a statistical claim; “considerably” is not).

Paraphrase (acceptable): Training appears to change how teachers feel more than what they do. In a survey of 412 teachers, those with 30 or more hours of digital training felt more confident teaching online, yet used digital tools in class only slightly more than colleagues with less training (Author, Year).

Paraphrase used in synthesis (better still): Several studies suggest a gap between teachers’ confidence and their classroom practice. Training raised confidence but barely changed tool use in one large survey (Author, Year), a pattern also reported in two smaller interview studies (Author, Year; Author, Year). Our study tests whether the same gap appears in rural government schools.

The last version is what examiners want to see in a review chapter. It uses the source for an argument that is yours. Our literature review guide covers synthesis in more depth.

Why do paraphrasing tools cause problems?

Tools such as QuillBot, generic “article rewriters” and AI chatbots asked to “rephrase this” are widely used by scholars trying to lower a similarity score. They cause four problems.

• They produce patchwriting. Most keep the source’s structure and swap words, which is exactly the pattern described above.
• They change meaning. “Significant” becomes “substantial”, “correlated” becomes “linked to”, “may” becomes “does”. In research writing, those are different claims.
• They read badly. Examiners in your field notice sentences no researcher would write, such as “artificial intelligence” turned into “counterfeit consciousness”. Cabanac, Labbé and Magazinov (2021) documented this pattern, which they called “tortured phrases”, in published papers.
• They may raise an AI-writing flag. Turnitin and DrillBit now report AI-writing indicators alongside similarity. Heavily rewritten text can lower one number while raising the other. Our guide to AI tools in a PhD covers what those indicators can and cannot show.

The underlying issue is that a low similarity score was never the goal. The UGC 2018 regulations on academic integrity are about presenting others’ work as your own, and a rewritten passage is still someone else’s idea and structure. If the idea is theirs, cite it. If the wording must be theirs, quote it.

Common paraphrasing problems in Indian theses

Definitions

Review chapters often open with five or six definitions of the main concept, each lightly reworded. Quote the one or two definitions that matter, with page numbers, and summarise the rest in a sentence: “Most definitions share two elements, X and Y (A; B; C).” Then say which definition your study adopts and why.

Methods descriptions

Standard procedures (a laboratory assay, a sampling formula, a data-cleaning step) are hard to paraphrase and do not need to be. Describe briefly what you did, and cite the protocol or source for the details. Some overlap in methods sections is normal, and research offices usually judge it differently from overlap in the review or discussion.

Your own earlier papers

If a thesis chapter draws on a paper you have already published, the text will match. Cite the paper, say in the chapter that it is based on it, and find out whether your university’s ordinance permits published papers inside the thesis. Rewording your own paper to hide the overlap is not the answer.

Writing in a second language

Many scholars borrow phrases because they are not confident of their own English. That is understandable, and the fix is not a tool. Write simply in your own words first, even if the sentences are plain, and get the language edited afterwards. Plain sentences in your own structure are far safer, and usually clearer, than elegant ones borrowed from a source.

A final check

• Every quotation is in quotation marks (or set as a block quote) and cited with a page number.
• No paraphrase follows the source’s sentence order clause by clause.
• No paragraph is built from a single source unless you say so and have a reason.
• Technical terms and names of scales are kept as they are, not replaced with synonyms.
• Every paraphrased and summarised idea carries a citation, including ideas from your own published papers.
• Nothing has passed through a paraphrasing or “humaniser” tool.