Page 526 - Wordsmith A Guide to College Writing

Paraphrasing and Summarizing:

Essential Research Skills

2 Demonstrate two essential research skills:

paraphrasing and summarizing.

One of the most difficult tasks of writing a research paper is to convey

an author’s ideas in your own words. When you paraphrase, you

rephrase a sentence or paragraph using your own sentence structure

and your own words. A summary involves exactly the same skills—
capturing ideas in your own words—but with a longer piece of source

material. You would normally paraphrase a sentence or a short

paragraph but summarize a longer paragraph, a section of an article,

or a chapter in a book. A paraphrase can usually capture an idea a bit

more closely. When you have only a sentence or a short paragraph to

paraphrase, you can express the author’s idea fully in your own
words. A summary of a chapter or of a long section of an article will be

more general and will leave out the details. Both a paraphrase and a

summary must be properly referenced as containing ideas from

someone else’s work.