The Difference Between Paraphrasing and Plagiarism Is One Rewrite Away

Most people think paraphrasing means swapping a few words with synonyms. It does not. That is called patchwriting, and most academic institutions classify it as a form of plagiarism. Real paraphrasing means understanding an idea and expressing it in your own words, with your own sentence structure, from your own perspective. The 5-step method that works Read the original passage carefully Set it aside completely Write the idea from memory in your own words Compare your version with the original Add your citation If you cannot write it from memory, you do not understand it well enough to paraphrase it. When to paraphrase vs when to quote Paraphrase when you need the idea but not the exact words. Quote when the original wording matters: technical definitions, famous phrases, language that is so precise you cannot improve it. A good rule: if you keep more than 3 consecutive words from the original, use a quote. The techniques that matter Restructure the sentence completely. If the origina