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How to Paraphrase? – Do’s and Don’ts

Paraphrasing refers to rewording a text or speech in your own words while keeping the original meaning intact. It is often used to clarify a message, simplify a complex text, avoid plagiarism, or convey a message in different styles or tones. This practice helps to change the focus of a text or make it more suitable for various audiences.

Undoubtedly, it has become easy to do with the invention of facilities like a paraphrasing tool. However, some guidelines should still be kept in mind while paraphrasing to satisfy the users’ demands and needs.

This blog post will highlight some of the dos and don’ts of paraphrasing to get good results

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Do’s of Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing is a tricky process. Nonetheless, if you keep in mind following rules, you can achieve excellent outcomes with this technique for multiple purposes.

Understand The Original Text Completely

The first rule of paraphrasing is to read the original text thoroughly with great attention to build a proper understanding of what the text stands for and how it is contextualized.

It will ensure that the paraphrased text produced by you conveys the same meaning and ideas as the original. It is so because a proper understanding of the text opens up multiple dimensions for you to say the same concept in different styles with utmost precision and accuracy.

As a result, readers who read the text you generate effectively comprehend the ideas.

Keep The Targeted Audience in Mind

It is another crucial factor you must take care of in paraphrasing. Prior research on your targeted audience will help you understand the intellectual caliber of your audience. As a result, you will understand what kind of language and diction you need to use in your wording to make things simpler for the audience.

On the other hand, if you don’t do so, you may get things pretty wrong. It means that if your targeted audience is ordinary readers, but you paraphrase a text as per the intellectual standing of professional academia, you will fail in impressing the audience as they won’t comprehend what you intended to say.

Therefore, you should conduct thorough research to know your audience before paraphrasing something.

Use Your Own Words to Express the Original Ideas.

It is another golden rule to achieve great outcomes against your efforts. When you incorporate your vocabulary and style in your version of a text, you succeed in giving a human touch. Moreover, it also authenticates your credibility as a paraphrasing expert in the market, which helps you get into more tasks and projects. Thus, you observe a rise in your professional career.

Keep The Original Meaning Intact

The next thing that adds quality to a paraphrased text is how you preserve the original essence of a text. So, while paraphrasing a text, you should always maintain the overall meaning of the text. That’s why you must do a sentence-wise paraphrasing to maintain coherence in your version to achieve unity instead of going word-to-word rephrasing which can ruin the overall perspective of the text.

However, if you don’t have a vast collection of words in your vocabulary, in that case, you can take help from a paraphrasing tool to get a stable output. It is so because it usually has a massive database of synonyms and sentence structure to replace words while keeping the meaning intact.

As a result, you get plenty of options to swap words and sentences of the original text with new ones to maintain the actual essence of the content despite several changes in that. Thus, the version you get paraphrased by sentence changer is thoroughly unique and easy to understand.

Cite The Sources If Mandatory

The last element of must-dos of paraphrasing is source citation. It means that if you don’t rephrase a text thoroughly and, instead of that, opt for paraphrasing a few chunks and keeping others as it is, then you should cite the sources properly to escape allegations of plagiarism. So, you must rephrase the whole text or give proper attribution to others to avoid consequences.

Don’ts of Paraphrasing

Like do’s, there are some don’ts of paraphrasing. So let’s shed some light on them
below:

● Don’t Change Only a Few Words

A text is considered paraphrased when you replace approximately eighty percent of the original text with your own words and ideas; otherwise, it would be regarded as
a plagiarized version, which can bring serious consequences. So, while paraphrasing
something, relying upon changing a few words won’t help the cause, as it will be
considered plagiarism.

Rather than that, you must try to swap as many words as you can to get the best result.

Alteration in The Original Meaning

When paraphrasing a text, ensure that the original meaning is not lost in your version, as it would fail to make sense to the readers. As a result, you won’t be able to get the desired outcomes for your efforts. Thus, your hard work will go down the drain.

Conclusion

Paraphrasing is a great pathway to efficiently make people understand complex subject matter and concepts. However, it is necessary to preserve the original text’s style, tone,and voice. This article will help you become an expert and proficient paraphraser.