Rephrasing is a writing technique that all students need to understand and learn. Whether you’re a University of Chicago student or a community college student, rephrasing is something you need to master. Rephrasing is used to incorporate the ideas of some authors into your text, but this must be done in your own words. When rephrasing a text, a paragraph, or even a sentence, you must follow certain rules, as we will explain here.

Why Rephrase?

When you write a paper for a class, you have to rephrase your sources, otherwise, there can be plagiarism accusations. Another way to go is to quote the sources and literature that you use, but that can lead to your entire paper being just one massive quote. This is where rephrase comes into play. Instead of always quoting people, just use their ideas and write them in their own words. Of course, you have to name the source in your bibliography, but it’s much better than using quotes all the time.

Rephrasing Guidelines

Before you continue to explore the details about rephrasing, you should look at this list of helpful tips on that matter:

• You must use your own words. This has to be repeated since it is the core of the rephrasing and it is that important to remember.
• Do not forget to specify the source in your bibliography
• Write down notes whenever you find something interesting that you can use in your paper or article. It’s best to write it in your own words right away.
• Use a thesaurus to find synonyms and words that best describe what you want to rephrase.
• Make sure that your rephrase is free of any grammar or spelling mistakes.
• Use Rephrasing Tools

There are many online tools that I also use to rephrase for myself. However, I always make sure that these tools are reliable before I use them, however, like the one from this useful link. You have to be careful because there are many tools that only change the words with synonyms in the sentence, which can cause them to lose their meaning or naturalness. Finding the best paraphrase service is not easy, but it’s definitely something that pays off since can save you a lot of time, especially if you are in a difficult situation with a deadline coming up.