When you write about someone else’s thoughts or research in your own academic work, you must describe their thoughts using your own words and not copy the original word-for-word. This is called paraphrasing. It is important to show that you understand what you read and that you are letting the original author have credit for their work (and not take it as your own).
To paraphrase, identify important ideas and phrases in the original text and think of other ways to state them. If the original included any definitions of complicated words, try to restate those, too.
Collect those reworded statements and try putting them together in different ways as sentences and paragraphs.
Take a break and then read what you put together. Does it make sense, or do you need to add some more detail or description?
Finally, cite your original text. You can use APA or MLA in-text citations in your new work to refer back to the source.
Watch a 2-minute example of paraphrasing below.