Paraphrasing is the act of rewriting a passage or an entire article in your own words and phrases, ensuring that the meaning of the original source is preserved.
Writing is a huge field today. There are different categories of writers required by various industries. The marketing industry requires copywriters and content writers. Academic institutes and organizations need technical and academic writers. Any type of information service usually requires a copywriter.
So many fields have to be typed and have to do a lot of work. With so much work being done in similar areas, it's not uncommon for writers to come up with similar content to each other. However, this is not acceptable as it may result in plagiarism.
So to avoid that, writers need to paraphrase.
Why should paraphrase be used?
In short, paraphrase can be used for three different purposes: Paraphrase is used to reduce the difficulty of reading a text.
It is also used to explain ideas that were difficult to understand or obscure in their original descriptions.
It is used to eliminate accidental plagiarism and self-plagiarism!
As we mentioned in the introduction, writers in the same field can end up creating incredibly similar content (unintentionally). Anyone who publishes their work later than others will be accused of plagiarism.
To avoid this kind of scenario, paraphrasing is a must. In this article, we will discuss how you can paraphrase content step by step and avoid plagiarism.
How to paraphrase with easy steps without plagiarizing
Method: manually
To paraphrase yourself, you need a thesaurus. A thesaurus is a thesaurus that you can use to find synonyms for any word you want.
Once you have a thesaurus, word processing software, and the article/column/newsletter or manuscript you need to paraphrase, you can start following these steps.
1 – Read the source
Read the content you are going to paraphrase. The first step in rewriting something in your own words is to understand the ideas and concepts being discussed. Once you know what is being talked about, you can later write it down in your own words.
2 – Extract the main ideas
Each literary work has a specific purpose. This could be proving or disproving a point, a guide on how to do something, or it could be explaining some kind of concept.
Your job is to find out what the main point of the article is. Identifying this is important because if you don't, you can completely ignore it during the paraphrase.
3 – Start writing in your own words
Here are some things to keep in mind when writing something in your own words.
- Make sure the original meaning is not lost. The relationships between ideas must be the same as in the original text.
- Use the thesaurus to find synonyms for the words you want to replace. However, make sure the keywords remain unchanged.
- Don't just substitute words. Instead, change entire sentences. Try joining shorter sentences together to make longer ones, or do the opposite and break longer sentences into smaller ones. This will make the paraphrasing job more complete.
- See if you can change the sequence in which information and ideas are presented without causing the text to lose meaning.
- Change voices, how to turn active voice into passive voice and vice versa.
These tips will help you write in your own words.
4 – Check everything
When finished, review the paraphrased version of the text. Make sure it makes sense and that any changes you've made make it look different enough. Also, see if your changes have altered the original meaning in any way. If so, then you have to rewrite them.
And that's all there is to manually paraphrasing. It takes a certain level of language skills and understanding to be able to fully understand someone else's work and convey it in your own words.
Method of using a paraphrase tool
Paraphrasing tools are capable of automatically rewriting/rephrasing a literary work using artificial intelligence. They often exist in the form of online tools rather than desktop or mobile apps. There are mobile apps available, but they are not as common and numerous as online tools.
Different tools are capable of different levels of paraphrasing and some provide different types and modes of paraphrasing. Not all tools are free, but there are plenty of options available for those who don't want to pay. So, you can select a paraphrase tool to paraphrase as per your budget. If you don't want to invest, you can select a free one.
This is how you can use an AI-powered tool to paraphrase online.
Give the tool input text
Most online paraphrases will have two fields or text boxes. One is for text input and the other displays paraphrased output.
A typical tool lets you upload a file from your computer or simply lets you type it directly into the input field.
You can use it however you like and move on to the next step.
Run Captcha
Free tools that do not require registration almost always have a captcha present to prevent bots from abusing them.
As a human user, it's annoying, but you have to deal with it. Run the captcha and then hit the button that says something like “Paraphrase Now”.
And that's it.
After pressing the button, the tool will paraphrase the text for you and display it in the output box, where you can download or copy it.
The output has some way of showing what has changed. New words and phrases are often highlighted, underlined, color-coded, or bolded.
And this is how it is done using an online paraphraser.
Conclusion
Now you know how to paraphrase something manually and using a tool. The manual method takes more time but increases your vocabulary and language skills.
The automatic tool method/method is easier to use and saves a lot of time. You can also teach him more vocabulary, but he will learn less effectively because he was not involved in the actual process of paraphrasing.