Good academic writing will quote and reference a range of sources. But is quoting sources always the best option? We’ll let you decide after reading our guide to paraphrasing.
Quoting and paraphrasing are both ways of drawing on someone else’s ideas in your writing. To quote someone, you use their exact words placed within ‘quotation marks’. This could be a single term, or it could be an entire paragraph. Quoting is most useful when:
In other cases, you might want to paraphrase a source instead. This involves expressing the same ideas you find in the source in your own words. The advantages of this are that:
This is especially useful as an alternative to quoting sources at length. However, remember that you still need to cite the source you are paraphrasing, even if you don’t quote it at all!
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There are no specific rules about how to paraphrase something, other than being clear and concise. We do, however, have a few tips about how to approach paraphrasing a source:
This will let you show off the research you’ve done without having to quote each source to do so!
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