is using a paraphrasing tool considered plagiarism

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Does Paraphrasing With A Tool Count As Plagiarism?

• October 12, 2022 at 3:48 am March 30, 2024 at 7:18 am

Paraphrasing is one of the common elements of writing good content. So, does it count as plagiarism?

Content is king, as said by Bill Gates over 26 years ago. It’s proven right today in every aspect, as 60% of marketers focus on creating at least one piece of content every day. However, creating good quality content is a challenge in Data Science Bootcamp , and that’s when a lot of writers employ paraphrasing tools.

But, does the paraphrasing tool commit plagiarism by rephrasing another author’s content? Moreover, what are the ground rules for using such a tool? And, how does it affect students or academic writers besides SEO writers?

Let’s find the answer to all of these.

Defining Plagiarism

Plagiarism is when a person copies another author’s work and claims that it is their own. This can be done in many different ways, including:

• Copying words from a source and putting them into the text without giving credit to the original author
• Copying ideas from a source without giving credit to the original author
• Presenting an idea as if it was your own but not giving credit to the original author
• Using someone else’s work without permission and claiming that you created it

While there are various types of plagiarism, which we’ll be discussing in a bit, all of them are equally unethical and wrong. Whether in an academic setting or a professional one, this is a practice that is frowned upon.

The cases caught with plagiarism are usually served with severe penalties, such as expulsion from the academies or getting fired from a job. However, the harms of plagiarism can exceed far beyond that, and some cases include:

• Writer’s lost credibility
• Reduction of academic grades
• Demotion or relegation in a professional setting (getting fired in worst-case scenarios)
• Brand’s tarnished reputation

These are some of the most common pitfalls of plagiarism for any writer.

4 Main Plagiarism Types

Plagiarism is a problem, and make no mistake, the factors mentioned above can also count in on accidental or unintentional plagiarism. That’s why it’s important to understand the four major types of plagiarism, which are:

• Mosaic Plagiarism

Mosaic plagiarism is a term that has been coined by the writer and researcher Dr. Rebecca Moore Howard. It is a form of plagiarism where an article or book is constructed from multiple sources without attributing them to the original author.

Since it’s hard to detect, it’s also considered the most unethical type. The construction of mosaic plagiarism can be done in one of three ways:

• The author takes passages from different sources, pastes them together, and rewrites them to create their own work
• The author copies and pastes passages into a word processor document, create a new title for the document, and publishes it under his or her name as if it were original content
• The author copy-pastes passages from different sources into a word processor document and publishes it under his or her name
• Direct Plagiarism

Some people copy content from other sources and then publish it as their own. This is called “direct plagiarism.” Direct plagiarism is a serious offense that can result in a legal action but harms the original author’s reputation. It can also lead to a loss of trust from readers, which is an important part of marketing for any business.

• Accidental Plagiarism

Accidental plagiarism is a common problem that many writers face without even intending to duplicate content. It is possible to accidentally plagiarize even without meaning to do so. How is that? For instance, by forgetting to cite a source or by using an online tool that automatically generates content.

• Source-Based Plagiarism

Source-based plagiarism is a form of plagiarism that occurs when a writer fails to cite the source of their work. Or if they cite a source that doesn’t exist. In order to avoid this type of plagiarism, it is important for writers to be aware of the potential pitfalls and to use reliable sources.

What Is A Paraphrasing Tool? How Does it Work?

A paraphrasing tool is a computer program that automatically paraphrases text. The program analyzes the original text and replaces words with synonyms to generate a new text. It’s based on AI algorithms that allow users to conduct these actions within seconds.

If you were, to sum up how a paraphrasing tool works, then it’d look like this:

• NLP reads the content and converts it for the machine
• AI scans and analyzes the text
• Then AI picks the best synonyms and alternative terms
• The tool replaces said terms with picked synonyms
• All this occurs within a mere seconds

Now, as opposed to manually rephrasing, a paraphrasing tool does it quickly and conveniently. That’s why this type of software is often used by:

• Bloggers who want to generate more content very quickly
• SEO specialists who want to improve the quality of their articles
• People/writers who need assistance with their writing skills

Since it’s also commonly available today, it’s becoming more and more popular within writing communities of all kinds around the globe.

The simple answer is no, it’s not plagiarism if you do it right. However, if you do it wrong, then a lot can go left and cause plagiarism in your text. In order to avoid that, it’s imperative that you focus on writing original text with the assistance of a paraphrasing tool.

So, what are the pillars of using paraphrasers without committing to plagiarism? Here are three main things you need:

• The Intention Should Be Right

The first thing that counts as plagiarism is the intention. If the writer intended to reuse another author’s work to save time or effort without giving them their due credit, then it’s plagiarism. Granted, plagiarism can be unintentional too.

However, plagiarism’s most unethical shape is the one where it’s intended to be that way. Therefore, the writer should always use a paraphrasing tool to avoid plagiarism, not cause it.

• Paraphrasing Should Be Thorough

One of the most common problems writers face when paraphrasing is the lack of it. In other words, not paraphrasing thoroughly is what commonly causes plagiarism. How could they avoid that? By paraphrasing all the way through.

If your content remains the same as the original one, then plagiarism will remain. That’s why, to avoid it effectively, it’s imperative to use a tool that thoroughly rewrites the original text and avoids any similarities with the original.

• The Citation Should Be There

The final nail is to cite the original author after paraphrasing. Remember, plagiarism is caused by not giving the original writer their due credit. Therefore, you need to make sure you cite properly after rephrasing.

So, how do you do that? By hyperlinking the text with the link to the original blog/website. Or, you can use MLA or APA styles to cite the original author.

How Should You Use A Paraphrasing Tool To Avoid Plagiarism?

Using a paraphrasing tool to avoid plagiarism sounds good, but you must ensure you’re doing it properly. So, here’s a four-step procedure you should use to avoid plagiarism every time you use a paraphrasing tool.

• Pick A Paraphraser

The first step is to pick a good paraphrasing tool, and while we’ll be suggesting three such tools later, you need to look for something that offers:

• Various content tones
• At least a 500-word count limit
• The natural tone of rephrased content
• Quick and convenient usage

If a paraphrasing tool has these traits, then go for it.

• Choose A Content Tone

Once you pick a tool, the next step is to paste or upload your content into the tool’s editor. After that, you’ll have to pick a content tone. Most good tools would offer something along the lines of:

While some tools don’t have these options, you shouldn’t worry because such tools know what’s best for your type of text.

• Rewrite Content

The next step is to let the paraphrasing tool rewrite your content. This process takes up a few seconds, depending on the abilities of the tool you pick. However, most capable tools would take around a minute or two to rewrite around 400-500 words.

• Cite The Source

The final step is to avoid plagiarism effectively by citing the source. As mentioned before, you can try various ways of citation, but using the MLA or APA system is the best way to ensure the original author gets their due credit.

3 Recommended Paraphrasing Tools in 2022

Now that the process is out of the way let’s talk about the tools. Bearing in mind all the qualities we mentioned before, we picked the three best paraphrasing tools you can use in 2022. Here they are:

• Paraphrasingtool by Prepostseo

PrePostSEO’s paraphrasing tool is one of the common occurrences in Google search results for such tools. And there’s a good reason behind that, as it’s perhaps the best paraphrasing tool available today.

You cannot ask for more from a paraphrasing tool with a good UI design and paraphrasing capabilities. Because, in theory, this is the complete paraphraser that every writer needs.

• 1000-word limit
• Four content tones
• Supports 17 languages
• Paraphrase Online by Editpad

Editpad is new to the game, but the paraphrasing tool is becoming one of the best available today. Featuring three different content tones and outstanding abilities to paraphrase online your text, it’s one of the best options you have.

On top of that, it can rewrite texts without causing unnatural or robotic tones. Which makes it an ideal companion for any writer.

• 1000+ word limit
• Three content tones
• Various supported languages
• Quick and convenient
• Paraphraser.io

Paraphraser.io is another leading name in paraphrasing , as it’s  one of the favorites among writers. Why is it used on a wide scale? Because it has all the key ingredients to make a good paraphrasing tool.

From two more-than-suitable content tones to plagiarism removing capabilities, it’s everything a writer needs to avoid plagiarism.

• 500-word limit
• Two content tones (three if premium)
• Supports 13 languages
• Exceedingly quicker than most paraphrasers

Understanding how to use a paraphrasing tool requires you to understand the basics of it. Most of which we’ve covered in this article, as it explains just how you should approach paraphrasing. Therefore, to sum it all up, use a good tool and make sure you cite the original author to avoid plagiarism.

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In the labyrinthine world of academic writing, paraphrasing walks a thin line between being a useful tool and a potential pitfall, leading to plagiarism.

Often referred to as "patchwriting" or " mosaic plagiarism," the act of paraphrasing raises a fundamental question: What makes writing truly original in an era saturated with accessible information? Mark Twain's assertion that all ideas are merely reconfigurations of existing ones challenges us to consider the essence of originality. This blog ventures into the complex dynamics of paraphrasing, disentangling its legitimate use from its problematic misuse. We'll delve into what constitutes effective paraphrasing that respects academic integrity and when it veers into the territory of plagiarism.

Unpacking the art of paraphrasing

Paraphrasing serves as a bridge, translating complex or specialized topics into accessible and simplified language. It is also a way for a student or researcher to synthesize what they have read, putting text into their own words to A) better understand the topic at hand and B) support their writing with a sound, meaningfully reworded example from an outside source. The Office of Research Integrity within the US Department of Health & Human Services offers a compelling example, transforming a dense scientific explanation into a concise, digestible format. Below is the original content: “Because the intracellular concentration of potassium ions is relatively high, potassium ions tend to diffuse out of the cell. This movement is driven by the concentration gradient for potassium ions. Similarly, the concentration gradient for sodium ions tends to promote their movement into the cell. However, the cell membrane is significantly more permeable to potassium ions than to sodium ions. As a result, potassium ions diffuse out of the cell faster than sodium ions enter the cytoplasm. The cell therefore experiences a net loss of positive charges, and as a result the interior of the cell membrane contains an excess of negative charges, primarily from negatively charged proteins” (Martini & Bartholomew, 1997, p. 204).

Here is an appropriate paraphrase of the above material:

“A textbook of anatomy and physiology (Martini & Bartholomew, 1997, p. 204) reports that the concentration of potassium ions inside of the cell is relatively high and, consequently, some potassium tends to escape out of the cell. Just the opposite occurs with sodium ions.”

The Office of Research Integrity also gives an example of an inappropriate version of paraphrasing from the original text: “...This movement is triggered by the concentration gradient for potassium ions. Similarly, the concentration gradient for sodium ions tends to promote their movement into the cell. However, the cell membrane is much more permeable to potassium ions than it is to sodium ions. As a result, potassium ions diffuse out of the cell more rapidly than sodium ions enter the cytoplasm…” (Martini & Bartholomew, 1997, p. 204). You’ll note that the above “rewritten” example is basically a copy of the original, save for a few superficial alterations, including word deletions, synonym swaps, and additions.

Because most of the words and structure of the original paragraph remain the same, this paragraph would technically be considered plagiarism, despite the writer crediting the original authors. As the Office of Research Integrity puts it: “[M]aking only cosmetic modifications to others’ writing misleads the reader as to who the true author of the original writing really is." In this scenario, a student could instead ask for support in learning how to more accurately paraphrase the information or alternatively, use a direct quote with a correctly cited source to make it clear that this is not their content. Effective paraphrasing isn't just about avoiding plagiarism; it's about enhancing comprehension and adding value to the discourse.

The original thought conundrum

In the realm of academic discourse, Bloom's Taxonomy emerges as a crucial framework, offering a layered understanding of cognitive development. This taxonomy, a hierarchy starting from basic knowledge recall to the creation of new ideas, challenges us to consider the concept of 'original thought' in education. As we go from 'Remembering' and 'Understanding' through to 'Applying', 'Analyzing', and 'Evaluating', we reach the peak - 'Creating'. This final stage is where originality is presumed to flourish. However, this presents a conundrum: in an age where information is ubiquitous and influences are numerous, can any thought claim absolute originality? This paradox is especially relevant in a digital era saturated with ideas, where the difference between inspiration and replication becomes increasingly blurred. Bloom’s Taxonomy, therefore, not only maps out cognitive skills but also invites a deeper reflection on the nature and possibility of truly original thought in our modern knowledge ecosystem.

What’s the difference between plagiarism and paraphrasing?

Plagiarism and paraphrasing, while seemingly similar, diverge significantly in intent and execution. Plagiarism is the act of passing off someone else's work or ideas as one's own while paraphrasing, in contrast, aims to rearticulate ideas for clarity while maintaining the essence of the original work. Paraphrasing becomes problematic when it strays into the realm of plagiarism, often manifested in the failure to properly attribute sources, bring new insights to the table, or to uphold academic integrity. To wholly uphold academic integrity is to commit to honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage. It is a holistic concept that must be backed up by institutional policies, curriculum, teaching interventions, assessment design, and feedback loops that strengthen a student’s bond to learning. In an earlier post, we explored the ways in which paraphrasing may become problematic. The following three examples are situations that may cause challenges around paraphrasing expectations:

• When a student does not understand the purpose behind paraphrasing, they may not see the importance of attributing what they've paraphrased and therefore overlook doing so . Educators must take great care in building a culture of academic integrity and explaining to students how cited, well-paraphrased passages not only enhance their writing (and also provide variety in an essay that would otherwise be all quotations), they uphold integrity by recognizing an author’s original work.
• When a student does not have the foundational literacy skills to paraphrase, it may lead them to unintentionally plagiarize. In a suspected case of academic misconduct, an educator must ascertain if it is a skill deficit or deliberate plagiarism. From there, strengthening a student’s literary comprehension skills and basic academic writing skills can help bolster their confidence and ability to paraphrase. Turnitin’s Draft Coach can also be used to help students write accurate citations in Microsoft® Word for the web and Google Docs™.
• When a student knowingly and purposely uses short-cut solutions in place of their own skills, it’s a sign that action must be taken. Paraphrasing tools, also known as word spinners, alter existing text with the purpose of evading plagiarism detection software. This deeply impacts learning because they prevent students from understanding how to truly paraphrase.

Steering clear of paraphrasing pitfalls

Avoiding paraphrasing plagiarism is a nuanced skill, requiring a blend of accurate citation, original sentence structuring, and a deep understanding of the source material. There are many ways to avoid paraphrasing plagiarism while still paraphrasing to summarize work and communicate topics more clearly and holistically. Ways to avoid plagiarizing include:

• Correct citation of sources
• Quoting and summarizing texts accurately
• Writing with your own sentence structures
• Understanding text and content clearly before paraphrasing

There is also a helpful paraphrasing strategy called the 4R’s: Read, Restate, Recheck, and Repair.

• Read: Did you understand the passage?
• Restate: Did you restate important points in your own words?
• Recheck: Did you include all of the important details?
• Repair: Did you correct any misinformation?

In addition to the above, the following sections delve into key elements to keep in mind and practical strategies to master this skill, ensuring that paraphrasing enriches, rather than diminishes, academic integrity.

The role of text spinners in paraphrasing plagiarism

Text spinners, or article spinners, present a new hurdle in the realm of paraphrasing plagiarism. These tools, designed to disguise copied content as original, exacerbate the issue by blurring the lines between legitimate paraphrasing and deceptive rewriting. “Simply put,” says Christine Lee, “when students use word spinners, they aren’t producing their own original work. Original work means that even when paraphrasing, students regenerate the ideas of another person into their own words and voice to express their own understanding of concepts.” Educators need to understand the emerging trends in misconduct and academic integrity so that they can build awareness around them, educate students on their misuse, and mitigate any threats to an institution's reputation to ensure authentic student learning.

How to effectively teach paraphrasing

Educators bear the responsibility of guiding students through the maze of paraphrasing. This entails instilling respect for academic integrity, teaching proper citation techniques, and encouraging the development of independent thought. To start, it is imperative to highlight examples of accurate paraphrasing and how it differs from quotations and summarizing. As quoted in an earlier Turnitin post, according to the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL):

• Quotations must be identical to the original, using a narrow segment of the source. They must match the source document word for word and must be attributed to the original author.
• Paraphrasing involves rewording a passage from source material into your own words. A paraphrase must also be attributed to the original source because there is no creation of new ideas. Paraphrased material is usually shorter than the original passage, taking a somewhat broader segment of the source and condensing it slightly.
• Summarizing involves putting the main idea(s) into your own words, including only the main point(s). Once again, it is necessary to attribute summarized ideas to the original source because no new ideas have been introduced. Summaries are significantly shorter than the original and take a broad overview of the source material.

And while there are myriad ways for educators to approach and teach this highly important skill, the following are a few resources that can support thoughtful plagiarism education and practice:

• Explain the course’s or institution’s policy on academic integrity clearly and early in the semester. Outline course and assignment expectations explicitly, including appropriate use and misuse of AI tools. By building a culture of integrity that is clearly defined, students can more deeply understand the value of accurate paraphrasing and citations, as well as understand the consequences of misconduct.
• Dive into Turnitin’s Paraphrasing Pack , eleven out-of-the-box resources developed by veteran educators that are ready to be implemented in the classroom. It features everything from research strategies and student checklists for paraphrasing to lesson presentations and printable graphic organizers.
• Explore all of the resources that support academic integrity in the age of AI , including valuable assets that help students to better understand how and when to use AI tools ethically.
• Conduct a candid conversation with a student if their work appears to have similarities to other texts without proper paraphrasing or citation, or if inappropriate usage of AI tools is suspected. These dialogues often transform a moment of misconduct into an opportunity for learning by determining if there is a skill deficit that can be readily addressed. The data housed in the Similarity Report, including instances of synonym swapping, as well as Turnitin’s AI writing detection tool, can both serve as jumping off points for these essential conversations.

Maintaining academic integrity while paraphrasing

While building that culture of academic integrity and teaching skills is the first step, educators know that oftentimes it’s necessary to take another step, one that will confirm or refute that the student’s work is solely their own. It may be as simple as a remarkably sophisticated sentence structure or vocabulary choice, but educators tend to recognize when a student misrepresents something that is not their work, as their own. That next step is as simple as reviewing Turnitin’s newly enhanced Similarity Report, which has a streamlined workflow to show both the Similarity Score and the AI writing score. While AI continues to evolve, so too does the students’ use of AI tools. Turnitin’s AI writing score may indicate the use of AI paraphrasing tools to modify AI-generated content. Educators have no “extra clicks” as AI paraphrasing detection is built seamlessly into the existing workflow that educators already use and trust. As before, this score is to inform the educator of the likelihood that the student tried to use AI paraphrasing tools as a shortcut; whether intentional plagiarism or not is determined by the educator and the student during formative discussions surrounding their work. Then, next steps to help a student to revise can be taken. Check out this infographic that defines the key differences between human- powered paraphrasing and AI paraphrasing tools, as well as the role an AI paraphrasing detector can play in this process.

In sum: How to skillfully paraphrase and avoid plagiarism

The skill of paraphrasing is foundational in academic writing, serving as a safeguard against the pitfalls of plagiarism and academic misconduct. When a student fails to master this skill, they risk inadvertently crossing the line from legitimate use of sources to plagiarism, a serious breach of academic integrity. Effective paraphrasing involves more than just altering a few words; it requires a deep understanding of the original text and the ability to express its essence in a new, original form while maintaining the core message. This process must be coupled with accurate citations and the appropriate use of quotes to credit the original authors. Without these critical components, a student's work can easily fall into the realm of academic dishonesty. Thus, learning to paraphrase correctly is not just about avoiding plagiarism; it's about respecting the intellectual labor of others, upholding the values of academic integrity, and contributing genuinely to the scholarly conversation.

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A Guide to Plagiarism and Paraphrasing

According to the joint research efforts of Dr. Donald McCabe and the International Center for Academic Integrity , nearly 30% of university students admit to having cheated in some way on an exam.

Understanding how and when to cite sources is a critical skill for students to learn. Whether you borrow someone’s ideas from a textbook, blog post, or academic journal, you must give proper credit while representing the source’s ideas fairly and coherently.

This guide covers:

• Paraphrasing
• Plagiarism checkers, citation managers, and writing tools

The Purdue Global Writing Center defines plagiarism as “using another's words, ideas, results, or images without giving appropriate credit to that person, therefore, giving the impression that it is your own work.”

Types of Plagiarism

University of Oxford notes eight common forms of plagiarism:

• Verbatim plagiarism: Copying someone else’s work word for word.
• Cutting and pasting from web pages without clear acknowledgement: Pulling information off the internet without referencing it and without including it in the bibliography.
• Paraphrasing: Paraphrasing so closely so that the copy is almost an exact match to the original.
• Collusion: In group projects, or projects in which you received help, failing to properly attribute the assistance or failure to follow the project’s rules.
• Inaccurate citation: Failing to cite correctly, according to the conventions of your discipline.
• Failure to acknowledge assistance: Failing to clearly acknowledge all assistance that has contributed to your work (ordinary proofreading and help from a tutor or supervisor is excepted).
• Use of material written by professional agencies or other people: Using material that was written by a professional agency or another person, even if you have the consent of the person who wrote it.
• Auto-plagiarism (also known as self-plagiarism): Reusing work that you’ve previously submitted or published; presenting that information as new when you’ve already gotten credit for the work.

A new concern revolves around AI and copying directly from chat, composition, and visual tools. Using prompts to generate content for assignments and passing it off as your own contribution is considered plagiarism. Various organizations use AI software to check for submissions generated by a chatbot.

Also, keep in mind that AI tools may produce inaccurate and unreliable information. While there may be valid use cases for informal AI-generated brainstorming, this is a complex and evolving topic. Be sure to verify the policy expressed by your school, professors, or professional organizations for recent developments.

It’s important to note that plagiarism can be intentional or unintentional. Unintentional plagiarism occurs when a student unknowingly cites a source inaccurately or improperly. Intentional plagiarism, on the other hand, is when a student chooses not to cite a source or tries to pass off someone else’s ideas as their own.

Consequences of Plagiarism

The consequences of plagiarism vary by institution, but it could get you expelled or dropped from a course. In less severe instances, plagiarism — both intentional and unintentional — may result in a grade penalty, course failure, or suspension. Beyond the academic consequences, plagiarism also tarnishes your reputation and minimizes your integrity. Whether you’re in school or the working world, plagiarism is not a good look.

How to Avoid Plagiarism

The key to avoiding plagiarism is learning how to incorporate research into your writing. According to the Purdue Global Writing Center , you can do this in the following ways:

• Quoting: If you don’t want to alter a source, use quotation marks to enclose all verbatim phrases.
• Summarizing: If you find multiple relevant points in a lengthy text, simplify them into your own condensed synopsis.
• Paraphrasing: If you want to use a source’s information, restate it in your own words.

Whether you’re quoting, summarizing, or paraphrasing, don’t forget to cite all sources.

What Is Paraphrasing?

Paraphrasing is using your own words to convey the meaning of an excerpt. It shows your reader that you did your research and understand the content. While students may understand that they need to cite sources, many struggle with paraphrasing the ideas of others into their own words. However, like many aspects of writing, effective paraphrasing is a skill developed over time.

How to Approach Paraphrasing

The goal of paraphrasing is to translate the original work into your own wording and sentence structure. The best way to approach this is to focus on the meaning of the text, forcing you to interact with its purpose and context.

Paraphrasing Tips

A good way to judge your understanding of material is to see if you can explain it to someone else. Once you have this level of understanding, it’s easier to create effective paraphrases — changing the language and structure of a passage becomes more manageable.

Here are some tips to help you paraphrase:

• Reread the passage until you fully understand its meaning.
• Write your own summary of the passage without referencing the original.
• Check that your summary accurately captures the context of the original passage.
• Document the source information following your summary, whether it’s an endnote or footnote.

Remember that you still need to cite your paraphrases, but your follow-up analysis and discussion points belong to you.

What Requires Citation?

Any time you use information that isn’t common knowledge or you didn’t come up with yourself, you must cite it. The following requires citation, usually through in-text citation or a reference list entry:

• Quotes: If you are quoting the actual words someone said, put the words in quotation marks and cite the source.
• Information and ideas: If you obtain ideas or information from somewhere else, cite it — even if you paraphrase the original content.
• Illustrations: If you use someone else’s graphic, table, figure, or artwork, you must credit the source. These may also require permission and a copyright notice.
• Photographs: If you use your own photography or an image that allows use without attribution, no citation is required. In other cases, add a note below the image and a corresponding reference citation.

Common Knowledge Exception

You don’t need to cite information that’s considered common knowledge in the public domain — as long as you reword the well-known fact. According to the Purdue Global Writing Center , information must have the following traits to be considered common knowledge:

• The reader would already be aware of it.
• It’s a widely accepted fact; for example, there are 24 hours in a day.
• It’s accessible via common information sources.
• It originates from folklore or a well-known story.
• It’s commonly acknowledged in your field and known by your audience.

Why Citation Is Important

The importance of citation goes beyond the avoidance of plagiarism. According to the Purdue Global Writing Center’s Plagiarism Information page, citation:

• Distinguishes new ideas from existing information
• Reinforces arguments regarding a particular topic
• Allows readers to find your sources and conduct additional research
• Maintains ethical research and writing
• Ensures attribution of ideas, avoiding plagiarism

Additionally, proper citation enhances your credibility with readers, displays your critical thinking skills, and demonstrates your strong writing ability.

Plagiarism Prevention and Writing Resources

It takes time to develop strong writing and paraphrasing skills. Thinking of writing as more of a discussion than a report may help you develop your skills. Remember that it’s not about reporting and repeating information; it’s about expanding on ideas and making them your own.

Below are some tools to help you avoid plagiarism, accurately cite sources, and improve your writing as you develop your own unique voice.

Plagiarism Checkers

• DupliChecker
• Grammarly's Plagiarism Checker
• Plagiarism Detector

Citation Managers

• Academic Writer
• Grammarly’s Free Citation Generator

>> Read: Apps and Extensions to Help You With APA Citations

Writing Tools

Check out purdue global’s writing center resources.

The Purdue Global Writing Center can help guide students through the paper writing process — from avoiding plagiarism to proper paraphrasing to getting the right citations.

Students may access this resource from the Purdue Global campus homepage . Click “My Studies,” followed by “Academic Success Center.”

From there, students have several options:

• Ask a writing tutor
• Connect with a tutor for a one-on-one session
• Browse the Study Studio
• Watch webinars

Students can check out the Using Sources & APA Style page , which includes several resources to guide students through the process of formatting a document and citing sources in the American Psychological Association (APA) style. The Plagiarism Information page offers a tutorial designed to help students identify instances of plagiarism and understand how to avoid them.

See Notes and Conditions below for important information.

About the Author

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Should universities be worried about the increasing capabilities of AI?

If a piece of writing was 49 per cent written by AI, with the remaining 51 per cent written by a human, is this considered original work? Image:  Unsplash/ Danial Igdery

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Stay up to date:, artificial intelligence.

• The use of technology in academic writing is already widespread, with teachers and students using AI-based tools to support the work they are doing.
• However, as AI becomes increasingly advanced, institutions need to properly define what can be defined as AI-assistance and what is plagiarism or cheating, writes an academic.
• For example, if a piece of writing was 49% written by AI, with the remaining 51% written by a human, is this considered original work?

The dramatic rise of online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic has spotlit concerns about the role of technology in exam surveillance — and also in student cheating .

Some universities have reported more cheating during the pandemic, and such concerns are unfolding in a climate where technologies that allow for the automation of writing continue to improve.

Over the past two years, the ability of artificial intelligence to generate writing has leapt forward significantly , particularly with the development of what’s known as the language generator GPT-3. With this, companies such as Google , Microsoft and NVIDIA can now produce “human-like” text .

AI-generated writing has raised the stakes of how universities and schools will gauge what constitutes academic misconduct, such as plagiarism . As scholars with an interest in academic integrity and the intersections of work, society and educators’ labour, we believe that educators and parents should be, at the very least, paying close attention to these significant developments .

AI & academic writing

The use of technology in academic writing is already widespread. For example, many universities already use text-based plagiarism detectors like Turnitin , while students might use Grammarly , a cloud-based writing assistant. Examples of writing support include automatic text generation, extraction, prediction, mining, form-filling, paraphrasing , translation and transcription.

Advancements in AI technology have led to new tools, products and services being offered to writers to improve content and efficiency . As these improve, soon entire articles or essays might be generated and written entirely by artificial intelligence . In schools, the implications of such developments will undoubtedly shape the future of learning, writing and teaching.

Misconduct concerns already widespread

Research has revealed that concerns over academic misconduct are already widespread across institutions higher education in Canada and internationally.

In Canada, there is little data regarding the rates of misconduct. Research published in 2006 based on data from mostly undergraduate students at 11 higher education institutions found 53 per cent reported having engaged in one or more instances of serious cheating on written work, which was defined as copying material without footnoting, copying material almost word for word, submitting work done by someone else, fabricating or falsifying a bibliography, submitting a paper they either bought or got from someone else for free.

Academic misconduct is in all likelihood under-reported across Canadian higher education institutions .

There are different types of violations of academic integrity, including plagiarism , contract cheating (where students hire other people to write their papers) and exam cheating, among others .

Unfortunately, with technology, students can use their ingenuity and entrepreneurialism to cheat. These concerns are also applicable to faculty members, academics and writers in other fields, bringing new concerns surrounding academic integrity and AI such as:

• If a piece of writing was 49 per cent written by AI, with the remaining 51 per cent written by a human, is this considered original work?
• What if an essay was 100 per cent written by AI, but a student did some of the coding themselves?
• What qualifies as “AI assistance” as opposed to “academic cheating”?
• Do the same rules apply to students as they would to academics and researchers?

We are asking these questions in our own research , and we know that in the face of all this, educators will be required to consider how writing can be effectively assessed or evaluated as these technologies improve.

Augmenting or diminishing integrity?

At the moment, little guidance, policy or oversight is available regarding technology, AI and academic integrity for teachers and educational leaders.

Over the past year, COVID-19 has pushed more students towards online learning — a sphere where teachers may become less familiar with their own students and thus, potentially, their writing.

While it remains impossible to predict the future of these technologies and their implications in education, we can attempt to discern some of the larger trends and trajectories that will impact teaching, learning and research.

Have you read?

Professor robot – why ai could soon be teaching in university classrooms, how digital technology is changing the university lecture, this is how university students can emerge from the pandemic stronger, technology & automation in education.

A key concern moving forward is the apparent movement towards the increased automation of education where educational technology companies offer commodities such as writing tools as proposed solutions for the various “problems” within education.

An example of this is automated assessment of student work, such as automated grading of student writing . Numerous commercial products already exist for automated grading, though the ethics of these technologies are yet to be fully explored by scholars and educators.

Overall, the traditional landscape surrounding academic integrity and authorship is being rapidly reshaped by technological developments. Such technological developments also spark concerns about a shift of professional control away from educators and ever-increasing new expectations of digital literacy in precarious working environments .

These complexities, concerns and questions will require further thought and discussion. Educational stakeholders at all levels will be required to respond and rethink definitions as well as values surrounding plagiarism, originality, academic ethics and academic labour in the very near future.

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The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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Paraphrasing vs Plagiarism (vs “Paraphrasing Plagiarism”)

• Posted on November 10, 2021 December 16, 2021

If you’ve done a fair share of writing, academically or otherwise, you’ve likely heard of both plagiarizing and paraphrasing. You’ve probably combed over essays or reports for accurate information and correct citations, but somehow someone always spot something you missed.

It can be confusing to avoid plagiarism with so many types out there and without a clear outline of the rules. Even more so when paraphrasing plagiarism sits on a fine line between what’s allowed and what’s not.

What Is Plagiarism?

Most people have a basic understanding of plagiarism : copying someone else’s words or work without crediting the original author or owner.

If you were to borrow a direct quotation from a famous film character and claim it as your own idea, chances are no one would believe you. But, that doesn’t change the fact that it would be considered plagiarism.

We tend to hear about plagiarism in terms of written works, but it covers all manner of works. A general guideline is to consider copyright. If it can be copyrighted, it can be plagiarized.

What is Copyright?

Copyright is the legal protection of intellectual property. Therefore, only the  copyright owner has the legal right to reproduce or allow the reproduction of their work.

While many authors, artists, composers, and creators might choose to file the paperwork to claim the copyright of their work, you don’t need to make it official. Copyright is intrinsic. The second you complete your poem or compose a new song, you are the copyright owner.

Copyright law can vary depending on the country. Although there is no such thing as international copyright, most countries offer some protections for foreign works.

In the US, copyright protection lasts for the duration of the author’s life plus 70 years. Additionally, work for hire, anonymous, or pseudonymous lasts 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation. As creation and publication are different standards, the protection defaults to whichever is shorter.

What if an artist borrowed a section of Starry Night, such as using the sky portion over an original cityscape? Imagine the artist doesn’t have malicious intent but rather the intention to pay homage to an inspirational creator.

While writing your original novel, what if you include a paragraph or chapter that plays off ‘Riddles in the Dark’ from The Hobbit? Of course, Gollum and Bilbo aren’t in the scene, but your characters similarly exchange riddles.

Van Gogh died in 1890, so he no longer owns the copyright. Therefore, works by Van Gogh are in the  public domain , meaning the general public may use or recreate them without obtaining permission.

Public domain includes works with expired copyrights, public works intended for general public use, and short phrases. For example, “Beam me up,” most associated with Star Trek is free to use.

However, if you were to try to quote an entire line of dialogue from Star Trek, such as including names and phrases more extended than a sentence, you would be infringing copyright. Using that brief three-word phrase might pay homage to your favorite show, but quoting an exchange of dialogue with Scotty and Kirk would be plagiarism.

As for the second homage example, J.R.R. Tolkien died in 1973, which means his estate still has legal rights. Therefore, if you were to imitate the scene or chapter without permission or crediting Tolkien, the homage would be plagiarism.

Taking it a step further, let’s assume you credit Tolkien for inspiring the scene in the author’s notes at the end of your book. It would not be plagiarism if you wrote a scene where two characters exchanged riddles trying to win a prize. However, it would be plagiarism if those two characters were in a cave, one of them promising not to kill the other if they win.

The difference is that plagiarism is when you copy the presentation of an idea. For example, no one owns the concept of riddles or games, which means your homage might paraphrase the idea of riddles-to-the-death, but not the exact words. However, it’s not homage when you place characters in a strikingly similar situation and connotation for more than a phrase or scene.

Types of Plagiarism

There are many  types of plagiarism . Some sources disagree about the amount, as some break down more specific categories while others generalize. Here we’ll discuss the general types with clarification on how they might divide into subcategories.

Word for word plagiarism is the simplest, most familiar type. Notably, copying, at any length, from a direct sentence to a direct paragraph would be verbatim plagiarism.

Mosaic or patchwork plagiarism falls under verbatim. However, mosaic plagiarism includes instances where the writer mentioned the quoted work earlier, but it is not directly connected.

For example, if you were discussing The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields,” you might mention the title in the first paragraph of your essay. Then, you open the third paragraph with lyrics from the song. You know you’re quoting the music, and Beatles fans know, but you need your essay to acknowledge the use within direct proximity.

For a correct example:

‘Always, no sometimes, think it’s me / But you know I know when it’s a dream,’ is an iconic lyric from “Strawberry Fields.”

Self-Plagiarism

If you own the work, you can recreate it. However, the same isn’t true when you’re submitting work. For example, if you write an essay about Hamlet in high school, presenting the same paper for a university class is self-plagiarism.

Legal action is rarely necessary for self-plagiarism  unless you promised an original work and breached a contract.

Accidental Plagiarism

When a citation isn’t precise, it is still plagiarism, even if the intention was to credit another creator. Crucial to avoiding this type of plagiarism is understanding your preferred manual of style.

Generally, Associated Press (AP) applies to journalism, Chicago for publishing/business, American Psychological Association (APA) for academic writing, and Modern Language Association (MLA) for humanities disciplines.

Accidental plagiarism  includes inaccurate citation, failure to acknowledge, attribution or inaccurate source plagiarism, and paraphrasing.

What Is Paraphrasing Plagiarism?

Paraphrasing is not always plagiarism. Effective paraphrasing requires an understanding of the topic or quote well enough to express it originally. It is a form of summarizing or rephrasing that clarifies the meaning of another author’s words in your own words.

A common pitfall of paraphrasing is copying a sentence or direct quote, then the writer tweaks a few words, rewords sentences, or replaces original words with synonyms. Choosing to modify rather than rewrite from scratch is paraphrasing plagiarism.

For an example of paraphrasing plagiarism: Imagine you’re writing that Hamlet essay. During your research, you read an inspiring analysis. If you copy phrases or sentences directly from that analysis, you would be plagiarising. Likewise, rewording a metaphor or sentence you liked would be paraphrasing plagiarism.

However, you could quote a phrase and include a citation. Alternatively, you could write an original interpretation of that idea.

How to Avoid Paraphrasing Plagiarism

The first step to avoid paraphrasing plagiarism is never to copy and paste. However, if while reading your notes over and over, you’ve lost track of where your original words begin, and the quotation ends, a paraphrasing plagiarism tool can catch mistakes that slip through the cracks.

Avoiding plagiarism can be tricky without extra eyes. However, whether your writing process involves meticulous text citation or you sometimes lose track of your source material, a plagiarism checker can save your hard work from accidental plagiarism, including incorrect paraphrasing.

Focus on making your writing the best it can be without stressing over plagiarism. Check out Quetext’s plagiarism checker , which recognizes plagiarism lightning-fast and generates any missed citations.

Sign Up for Quetext Today!

Click below to find a pricing plan that fits your needs.

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Why is it still plagiarism when I paraphrase and use my own words?

It’s hard to get anything right the first time. The vast majority of us don’t learn to ride a bicycle the first time we get on a bike. We don’t learn to drive right away, either. We learn with guidance and correction--and it’s even better when we receive that feedback in the moment and multiple times. Essay writing is the same.

While copying and pasting another person’s work and presenting it as your own idea can be a pretty clear example of plagiarism, there are a lot of nuances to academic misconduct, too. It’s not easy figuring out whether or not you’ve got it right, all while you’re trying to learn and avoid getting in trouble when you didn’t intend to plagiarize.

Let’s bring up one example-- like distinguishing paraphrasing and plagiarism from original work.

Students are told to “put ideas into your own words” in order to avoid plagiarism. We know to always cite quotations. They’re literally words from another person (easily accomplished via copy and paste) and they should be credited to someone else.

But teachers also tell students to “use the ideas of others in your own words,” which is also defined as paraphrasing. 🤪

What on earth is the difference? Isn’t taking the ideas of another person and putting them into your own words a way to avoid plagiarism??? Answer: Not when it’s someone else’s idea.

In a prior post on paraphrasing, we wrote, “Citation isn’t simply about giving credit for other people’s words. It’s about both giving credit to other people’s work that your writing is built upon and highlighting where your information came from” ( Plagiarism.org , 2018 ).

Here is an example of paraphrasing and an appropriate in-text APA citation for the above quote:

It is important not only to cite quotations in the form of other people’s words but also to give credit to the ideas of others. When your writing is built upon their ideas, it’s important to highlight your sources ( Plagiarism.org , 2018 ).

Because we didn’t build on the idea, but repeated it, we attributed the source.

When we have our own original ideas, then those are our own and there is no need to cite sources. For instance, we can use the above idea from Plagiarism.org and build on it to form an original idea:

It’s important to cite our sources, whether they’re quoted or paraphrased, to avoid plagiarism. First, let’s discuss how to tell the difference between our own words and paraphrasing.

Paraphrasing is summarizing the idea of another person--and when we use that idea to build our own, we then produce original work. So what are some effective ways to learn to avoid paraphrasing plagiarism?

• Cite the source when you are repeating the idea of another person’s work.
• If your text is too close to the original work, consider quoting and citing the source.

In sum, cite your source when you paraphrase.

Another way to avoid paraphrasing plagiarism is with real-time feedback. Sometimes our instructors give us a list that tells us all the different ways plagiarism can manifest. But it’s hard to learn something a month in advance, and then have to recall it within the process of writing. It’s way more effective for that information to arise while we’re writing. Wouldn’t that be nice?

There are tools like Draft Coach that can provide feedback in real-time that helps guide us towards proper citation so that we can focus on writing a better paper. And stop worrying about committing plagiarism by accident and getting an F or worse.

This is the best kind of feedback, one that actually helps, telling us specifically what we need to improve right then and there as we learn. Ultimately, the goal is to be able to do this automatically and do this all on our own. But just like driving or riding a bicycle, there’s a learning journey beforehand and students should feel supported through that process.

Because in the end, believing in yourself helps you to be more original.

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How can you grow your writing confidence as a student and avoid plagiarism while drafting a paper? Read on to find out.

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Can i be accused of plagiarism.

Can I Be Accused of Plagiarism if I Cite Everything Correctly?

Paraphrasing Q&A: Answering the Biggest Questions on Paraphrasing

From academic research papers to lifestyle blogs, paraphrasing is an important part of the writing process. To avoid plagiarism and potential legal consequences, it’s important to know the ins and outs of the practice. 

In this blog post, we address some of the biggest questions around the topic of paraphrasing to give viewers the answers they’ve been looking for. If you’re ready to end your search for clarity, then continue reading!

What is paraphrasing?

The Oxford dictionary defines paraphrasing as “expressing the meaning of (something written or spoken) using different words, especially to achieve greater clarity.” 

The whole purpose behind paraphrasing is taking something that’s been written or spoken and rewriting it in your own words. You’re essentially trying to convey a message from someone else in a simpler, clearer way that also makes it unique. Many people argue that the goal of paraphrasing is to convey someone else’s thoughts or text in a unique way while still maintaining the original meaning and intent.

What is the difference between paraphrasing and summarizing?

We see this particular question quite often. While paraphrasing and summarizing share some similarities, they are actually separate and different concepts.

Paraphrasing is the process of rewriting something, or phrasing it in a new way. However, the goal is to make sure that you still get the point across – in other words, sticking to the original meaning of the text. You need to paraphrase text in a way that doesn’t change the meaning of what you’re trying to say. Consider it a professional version of the Broken Telephone game we used to play as children. 

Summarizing , on the other hand, is when writers try to generate a condensed version of the text they want to use in their content. This is done by identifying key points and relaying them to your readers. The goal here is to provide your readers with this information in a clear and concise way that’s easier to understand and quicker to read. 

How much can you paraphrase before it’s considered plagiarism?

Paraphrasing must be done properly to avoid being considered as plagiarism. Even while paraphrasing, you should try to add your own insights or take on the topic. Paraphrasing text goes beyond simply rewording existing concepts – you need to put some effort into adding your own unique spin to the mix. 

As for how much paraphrasing is considered plagiarism – there’s no set amount because it depends on how well you’ve changed the structure, wording, and context as a whole. It all boils down to whether or not your content can be directly associated with the original text. If you haven’t included the appropriate citation, then it could be seen as plagiarism.

For paraphrasing to be considered plagiarism, it has to meet certain criteria:

• Direct Copying : If you’ve merely swapped out or changed a few words from the original text and haven’t significantly altered sentence structure or context, it could be considered plagiarism.
• Structure Copying : If the structure or sequence of ideas in your paraphrase closely mimics the original text, it could potentially be seen as plagiarized. Yes, even if you’ve changed the wording. 
• Lack of Citation : If you’ve paraphrased someone’s work and didn’t properly credit the source, it’s considered plagiarism, even if the paraphrasing itself was done well.
• Incorrect or False Citation : Providing a citation that is misleading or doesn’t relate to the original source can be seen as a form of academic dishonesty or plagiarism.
• Reusing the Same Paraphrase : If you keep reusing the same paraphrased content across multiple pieces of work, it could be seen as self-plagiarism (we know, it sounds a little crazy).
• Using AI without Editing : If you use an AI tool for paraphrasing and don’t edit or personalize the output, this can be detected by plagiarism checking software. That means it could potentially be considered plagiarism.

Remember that the main aim of paraphrasing is to present the same information or ideas in your own unique way, reflecting your understanding and perspective. If it doesn’t achieve this, it could likely be seen as plagiarism.

Is it ethical and legal to use AI tools to paraphrase sentences?

This question has been debated time and time again. 

Yes , it’s both ethical and legal to use AI tools to paraphrase sentences. 

However, the purpose cannot be to plagiarize or misrepresent someone else’s work as your own. 

If you take the necessary precautions to make sure you credit original authors and writers with accurate citations and references, using AI tools can help you reduce time and money spent on the process. 

While using AI tools for paraphrasing, it’s essential to always proofread and make sure the rewritten text maintains the original meaning and context correctly. It’s also always a good idea to add a personal touch to AI-generated content to make sure it’s 100% unique. You might want to use plagiarism detection tools to make sure that content generated by AI paraphrasing tools is safe to use. 

If I paraphrase using AI, can it be detected?

Yes , it can potentially be detected if you paraphrase using AI. 

Though AI tools are becoming increasingly intelligent in rewriting content, they may still leave stylistic patterns or other indicators that could hint the use of a paraphrasing tool. If the paraphrased content is too similar to the original text, plagiarism detection tools may flag it. That’s why users should always go over the generated text to make sure it isn’t too close to the original source and that new insights are added. 

Why are paraphrasing tools important for content writers?

For content writers, finding new and unique ways to convey the same message that’s been shared countless times before can be challenging. Paraphrasing tools help rewrite texts in a more engaging and impactful way. They can also help in avoiding plagiarism, diversifying vocabulary, improving sentence structure, and saving time. However, the trouble comes in when writers rely solely on these tools and neglect using their own writing skills and creativity in the process.

Here are 5 reasons why paraphrasing tools are important for content writers:

• Avoiding plagiarism : Paraphrasing tools help rephrase information taken from different resources in a way that changes the wording, sentences structure, and vocabulary. Put these all together and you have a recipe for avoiding plagiarism. It rewrites the content in a unique way while still retaining the essence and meaning of the original content.
• Enhancing productivity : These tools can speed up the writing process by providing quick alternatives or rephrasing. Depending on your chosen tool’s capabilities, it can handle a large piece of content in a short period of time, leading to an increase in a writer’s productivity.
• Improving content quality : Paraphrasing tools can help improve the quality of the content. They’re often used to make the content more readable, engaging and SEO-friendly. These factors all play an important role in creating impactful content that ranks on search engines.
• Understanding difficult text : Sometimes, the source of the original content is complex and hard to understand. Paraphrasing tools can rewrite this content into simpler terms and everyday language, making it more comprehensible for the average reader. 
• Learning and improving language skills : By using paraphrasing tools, content writers can learn new ways to express the same idea. They may also help with expanding their vocabulary. Over time, this has a positive impact on their writing skills as a whole.

What is the best online paraphrasing tool to use?

While we have offered 5 online paraphrasing tools for writers to consider, we’re going to dive deeper into why ContentBot is the best. There’s no doubt that rephrased content sets this tool apart from the rest. Throughout this blog post, we’ve mentioned multiple times how important it is to go beyond simply switching out synonyms when paraphrasing text. You need to change the structure, vocabulary, and wording if the work is to be considered unique. That’s where ContentBot excels compared to competitors. The newly-generated content has high variability and requires very little editing. While the meaning of the original text still comes through in the new version, the content itself is vastly different. This helps users avoid plagiarism and achieve unique content across the board.

With ContentBot , you also get a lot more than just a paraphraser. Your account will automatically include access to the:

• Paraphrasing tool
• AI content automation
• Plagiarism checker
• The list goes on!

There’s a Chrome extension that allows users to access the tools more easily. The different third-party integrations, including Zapier and WordPress, make sharing your content much simpler. 

When it comes to paraphrasing content, you can choose whether you’d like to use the rephraser or InstructBot. All you have to do is paste your content into the allocated space provided. Next, you’ll “instruct” the AI to paraphrase the text (and add a plagiarism check just to be sure), and sit back while the AI performs its job. You’ll receive the paraphrased content within a few seconds. From there, all that’s left to do is add a few personal touches and publish it on your platform of choice. There’s a free demo account for users who’d like to test each of ContentBot’s features. 

Advantages of ContentBot’s paraphrasing tool:

• Rephrase up to 2000 words at once.
• Regeneration option to see different output selections.
• Plagiarism detection.  
• Clear indication of the level of variability of the new content.
• Multiple language options.

Are you interested in trying ContentBot’s paraphrasing tool for yourself? If so, then sign up here ! And if you need help with getting the most out of this paraphrasing tool, here’s our step-by-step guide to help you. 

Can Turnitin detect paraphrased AI content?

In some cases, yes . 

Turnitin has an intelligent algorithm that can potentially detect paraphrased content, even if it’s created using AI. If the paraphrased text is too similar to the original or if it maintains the same structure and order of ideas, Turnitin may flag it as potentially plagiarized. 

However, while Turnitin developers have made significant progress in their AI-detection, more complex cases of AI paraphrasing may go unnoticed. There are also a few ways to pass the AI-detection and plagiarism . As the technology advances, it becomes harder for them to pick up on AI-generated content. To be on the safe side, it’s best to edit content that’s been generated by AI to add your own personal touch and insights. 

Do you still need to add references and citations when paraphrasing?

Yes , you do need to add references and citations even when you’re paraphrasing. 

Although the words and sentence structure may be different, the ideas or information you’re presenting come from someone else’s work. Proper attribution plays a key role in integrity and respect for intellectual property when it comes to writing.

It’s important to remember that the appropriate citation and referencing process depends on the medium of content you’re creating. Attributions for research papers and academic purposes have vastly different standards compared to everyday blog posts and articles. 

Paraphrasing examples

Original: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Paraphrase: The agile, brown fox leaps across the sluggish canine.

Original: If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake. – Frank Wilczek

Paraphrase: Not making errors indicates you’re not tackling challenging issues, which, in itself, is a significant blunder. – Frank Wilczek’s idea.

Original: Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. – Albert Schweitzer

Paraphrase: Achievement doesn’t necessarily lead to happiness. On the contrary, it’s happiness that paves the way for success. If you’re passionate about your work, success will follow. – This is what Albert Schweitzer believed.

Original: To be, or not to be, that is the question. – Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Paraphrase: The dilemma is whether to exist or not. – A paraphrase from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Do you have any questions about paraphrasing that we haven’t mentioned in this blog post? Let us know in the comments section so that we can answer them next time.

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Paraphrasing vs Plagiarism: Differences with Examples

• Smodin Editorial Team
• February 21, 2023

Paraphrasing and plagiarism are two essential aspects of any research work or study. In the contemporary world, where ethical laws highly protect intellectual and research work, it is rare for people to directly quote someone’s work in its original form. 

When Should You Paraphrase?

Of course, maintaining the work’s ethical value and confidentiality is crucial to maintaining the quality of the research conducted. One tends to tweak and modify the words and restructures any phrase. In layman’s language, this is known as paraphrasing, which is done to avoid infringement on the owner’s rights. Every academic student and researcher should be knowledgeable about the meaning of paraphrasing. One must ensure that the purpose of the restated words is not changed in paraphrasing. This is where paraphrasing tools (Smodin’s Paraphrasing Tool) come into play and act as a lifesaver for any academic student. It is common to paraphrase whether you are writing an essay, an article, a thesis, or a research paper. It helps in delivering your ideas more effectively and coherently.

Should Plagiarism Be Used?

Paraphrasing is done where a direct quotation is irrelevant to the academic paper. While it is essential to paraphrase words, the lack of it leads to plagiarism. Plagiarism is something that every research student must be wary of and never do intentionally, as it can subjugate one’s work to harsh critique by peers. Furthermore, it can even be considered illegal and against research ethics. The very backbone of research is work that is free from any hints of plagiarism, and following the code of conduct is vital for the success of one’s written work. Not only does plagiarism tarnish the tonality of the writing, but it also ruins the writing structure and authenticity. So any time you add someone’s work to your paper, make sure you credit the author properly so that the work is not mistaken for your own in any way, shape, or form. 

Mostly, plagiarism happens by mistake due to the need for the right tools to paraphrase one’s written work. Thankfully, many online tools can help you translate effectively and detect plagiarism that might be “plaguing” your document. Using these tools is encouraged by academic institutions to make your writing error-free. So now that it is evident why these terms are crucial let us understand with examples what the two terms mean and the critical differentiation between them. One must ensure that paraphrasing and plagiarism are distinct so that the quality of the paper is excellent. 

What is Paraphrasing?

Simply put, paraphrasing means conveying somebody’s ideas in words that are entirely your own. According to Cambridge Dictionary, “paraphrasing” means “to repeat something written or spoken using different words, often in a humorous form or in a simpler and shorter form that makes the original meaning clearer.” Thus, even though it might be tempting to paraphrase a quote or a passage, you must be careful that it does not get considered plagiarism. In other words, you should use more synonyms and refrain from using original words and concepts. You can, however, use generic terms such as global warming and globalisation as they are commonly understood and accepted. 

For example , let us take a look at this fact related to the human body:

Original phrase: At birth, infants have about 300 bones. However, some of these bones get fused as they grow older; eventually leading to only 206 bones by the time they attain adulthood.

Paraphrasing: Babies are born with approximately 300 bones in their body, but as they turn older and reach adulthood, the bones tend to amalgamate and decrease to just 206.

Plagiarism: Infants have about 300 bones at the time of birth . These bones get fused as they grow older, leaving them with just 206 bones in total by the time they attain adulthood .

From this, we can clearly understand the difference between plagiarism and paraphrasing. 

In the first example (paraphrasing) , the text has been paraphrased effectively as there is the usage of synonyms (amalgamate, babies, etc.) Also, the translated text has restated words, and their meaning does not change.

In the second example (plagiarism) , a lot of plagiarism occurs as the writer has used exact words from the original text without quotation marks. Additionally, the actual words have been used, and there are a lot of duplicities.

What is Plagiarism?

Using parts of another person’s work and passing it across as your own, intentionally or unintentionally, is plagiarism. Exposure can even lead to a bad grade or cause extreme critique amongst one’s peers, as it is a morally unethical practice. Research allows no room for plagiarized work and can tamper the reputation of the one whose work is “stolen”. One can avoid such instances with the help of many online tools such as DupliChecker, Copyscape, and Plagiarism Detector. However, it is best to understand what plagiarism is and how to avoid it manually, as getting exposed can have serious consequences. 

When it comes to providing a proper citation, your local library’s help can help a lot. Also, online software and tools like Zotero, Ref Works, EndNote, and Mendeley can go a long way in ensuring that credit is provided wherever it may be due. It also helps to develop an understanding of the passage and understand the text after reviewing it thoroughly. By doing this, there will be little confusion, eliminating the need for plagiarism.

Types of Plagiarism

Paraphrasing vs plagiarism is a rather broad and versatile topic. There are several types of plagiarism, and having an understanding of each one of them is vital in academics and research. According to the Harvard College Writing Program, these are as follows:

• Verbatim Plagiarism: This means copying someone’s work word by word.
• Mosaic Plagiarism: Taking parts of text from various sources without crediting the author.
• Inadequate Paraphrase: Paraphrasing that still has duplicity. 
• Uncited Paraphrase: Sufficiently copying another person’s work without giving credit.
• Uncited Quotation: Lack of reference material on a quotation cited from an external source.
• Using Another Student’s Work: Misusing someone’s ideas by completely copying them and taking all the credit for their work.

Thus, it is always handy to use RefWorks and Zotero to keep a proper log of all the citations and references used in your research paper or thesis. By doing so, you can go a long way in maintaining your work’s originality and ethical quality. 

Is Paraphrasing The Same As Plagiarism?

Paraphrasing is not the same as plagiarism, as the former encompasses proper citations, quotation marks, and references wherever necessary. However, paraphrasing might count as plagiarism in cases where:

• If your text is copied too closely to the original text, it is considered plagiarism. Yes, even if you provide proper citations. Thus, you are encouraged to use restated wording after grasping the passage’s meaning.
• Paraphrasing can also be considered plagiarism if you do not provide credit to the original writer.

When is Paraphrasing Not the Same as Plagiarism?

Although the lines between the two concepts may seem blurred, there are instances where paraphrasing and plagiarism are not similar such as the following:

•  If you do not copy the original author’s work, word by word, and provide adequate citations, then paraphrasing is not considered the same as plagiarism.

How to Paraphrase Without Plagiarism?

To paraphrase without getting acquitted of plagiarism, follow the given tips:

• Keep the Original Text at Bay

Once you have read the original text, leave it aside when it is time to write. By doing so, you can avoid confusion and hesitation. Also, use different coloured pens and highlighters while gathering sources for citing. 

• Gather a Genuine Understanding

Read the text a couple of times till you have acquired an understanding of it by heart. If you understand the concept, it will be a walk in the park for you to paraphrase it later in your words. 

• Adequately Cite The Sources

Be mindful of the various writing styles, such as the APA and the MLA. Follow the manual’s guidelines and use the format that is in the latest edition. Always use adequate citations and quotations in your writing.

• Use Anti-Plagiarism Tools

If you are a student, you can benefit from anti-plagiarism tools such as Copyscape and DupliChecker. These tools will allow you to escape accidental plagiarism. You can also use Grammarly’s Plagiarism Tool, which is one of the best.

Smodin’s Paraphrasing Tool

Another excellent paraphrasing tool is Smodin’s paraphrasing tool . Using this tool, you can rewrite any passage using as little as five words. It restates your text with good grammar and ensures high quality simultaneously. Smodin’s paraphrasing tool also comes packaged with a citation generator and a plagiarism checker. In short, it is your one-stop solution for all research-related papers.

On A Final Note

Paraphrasing is essential in any work to convey an original text in one’s own words. Smodin’s Paraphrasing Tool, Grammarly , CopyScape, and, DupliChecker are all handy tools for writing a top-notch academic paper. So check them out through the links given in this article.

• Utility Menu

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A publication of the harvard college writing program.

Harvard Guide to Using Sources 

• The Honor Code
• What Constitutes Plagiarism?

In academic writing, it is considered plagiarism to draw any idea or any language from someone else without adequately crediting that source in your paper. It doesn't matter whether the source is a published author, another student, a website without clear authorship, a website that sells academic papers, or any other person: Taking credit for anyone else's work is stealing, and it is unacceptable in all academic situations, whether you do it intentionally or by accident.

The ease with which you can find information of all kinds online means that you need to be extra vigilant about keeping track of where you are getting information and ideas and about giving proper credit to the authors of the sources you use. If you cut and paste from an electronic document into your notes and forget to clearly label the document in your notes, or if you draw information from a series of websites without taking careful notes, you may end up taking credit for ideas that aren't yours, whether you mean to or not.

It's important to remember that every website is a document with an author, and therefore every website must be cited properly in your paper. For example, while it may seem obvious to you that an idea drawn from Professor Steven Pinker's book The Language Instinct should only appear in your paper if you include a clear citation, it might be less clear that information you glean about language acquisition from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy website warrants a similar citation. Even though the authorship of this encyclopedia entry is less obvious than it might be if it were a print article (you need to scroll down the page to see the author's name, and if you don't do so you might mistakenly think an author isn't listed), you are still responsible for citing this material correctly. Similarly, if you consult a website that has no clear authorship, you are still responsible for citing the website as a source for your paper. The kind of source you use, or the absence of an author linked to that source, does not change the fact that you always need to cite your sources (see Evaluating Web Sources ).

Verbatim Plagiarism

If you copy language word for word from another source and use that language in your paper, you are plagiarizing verbatim . Even if you write down your own ideas in your own words and place them around text that you've drawn directly from a source, you must give credit to the author of the source material, either by placing the source material in quotation marks and providing a clear citation, or by paraphrasing the source material and providing a clear citation.

The passage below comes from Ellora Derenoncourt’s article, “Can You Move to Opportunity? Evidence from the Great Migration.”

Here is the article citation in APA style:

Derenoncourt, E. (2022). Can you move to opportunity? Evidence from the Great Migration. The American Economic Review , 112(2), 369–408. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20200002

Source material

Why did urban Black populations in the North increase so dramatically between 1940 and 1970? After a period of reduced mobility during the Great Depression, Black out-migration from the South resumed at an accelerated pace after 1940. Wartime jobs in the defense industry and in naval shipyards led to substantial Black migration to California and other Pacific states for the first time since the Migration began. Migration continued apace to midwestern cities in the 1950s and1960s, as the booming automobile industry attracted millions more Black southerners to the North, particularly to cities like Detroit or Cleveland. Of the six million Black migrants who left the South during the Great Migration, four million of them migrated between 1940 and 1970 alone.

Plagiarized version

While this student has written her own sentence introducing the topic, she has copied the italicized sentences directly from the source material. She has left out two sentences from Derenoncourt’s paragraph, but has reproduced the rest verbatim:

But things changed mid-century. After a period of reduced mobility during the Great Depression, Black out-migration from the South resumed at an accelerated pace after 1940. Wartime jobs in the defense industry and in naval shipyards led to substantial Black migration to California and other Pacific states for the first time since the Migration began. Migration continued apace to midwestern cities in the 1950s and1960s, as the booming automobile industry attracted millions more Black southerners to the North, particularly to cities like Detroit or Cleveland.

Acceptable version #1: Paraphrase with citation

In this version the student has paraphrased Derenoncourt’s passage, making it clear that these ideas come from a source by introducing the section with a clear signal phrase ("as Derenoncourt explains…") and citing the publication date, as APA style requires.

But things changed mid-century. In fact, as Derenoncourt (2022) explains, the wartime increase in jobs in both defense and naval shipyards marked the first time during the Great Migration that Black southerners went to California and other west coast states. After the war, the increase in jobs in the car industry led to Black southerners choosing cities in the midwest, including Detroit and Cleveland.

Acceptable version #2 : Direct quotation with citation or direct quotation and paraphrase with citation

If you quote directly from an author and cite the quoted material, you are giving credit to the author. But you should keep in mind that quoting long passages of text is only the best option if the particular language used by the author is important to your paper. Social scientists and STEM scholars rarely quote in their writing, paraphrasing their sources instead. If you are writing in the humanities, you should make sure that you only quote directly when you think it is important for your readers to see the original language.

In the example below, the student quotes part of the passage and paraphrases the rest.

But things changed mid-century. In fact, as Derenoncourt (2022) explains, “after a period of reduced mobility during the Great Depression, Black out-migration from the South resumed at an accelerated pace after 1940” (p. 379). Derenoncourt notes that after the war, the increase in jobs in the car industry led to Black southerners choosing cities in the midwest, including Detroit and Cleveland.

Mosaic Plagiarism

If you copy bits and pieces from a source (or several sources), changing a few words here and there without either adequately paraphrasing or quoting directly, the result is mosaic plagiarism . Even if you don't intend to copy the source, you may end up with this type of plagiarism as a result of careless note-taking and confusion over where your source's ideas end and your own ideas begin. You may think that you've paraphrased sufficiently or quoted relevant passages, but if you haven't taken careful notes along the way, or if you've cut and pasted from your sources, you can lose track of the boundaries between your own ideas and those of your sources. It's not enough to have good intentions and to cite some of the material you use. You are responsible for making clear distinctions between your ideas and the ideas of the scholars who have informed your work. If you keep track of the ideas that come from your sources and have a clear understanding of how your own ideas differ from those ideas, and you follow the correct citation style, you will avoid mosaic plagiarism.

Indeed, of the more than 3500 hours of instruction during medical school, an average of less than 60 hours are devoted to all of bioethics, health law and health economics combined . Most of the instruction is during the preclinical courses, leaving very little instructional time when students are experiencing bioethical or legal challenges during their hands-on, clinical training. More than 60 percent of the instructors in bioethics, health law, and health economics have not published since 1990 on the topic they are teaching.

--Persad, G.C., Elder, L., Sedig,L., Flores, L., & Emanuel, E. (2008). The current state of medical school education in bioethics, health law, and health economics. Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics 36 , 89-94.

Students can absorb the educational messages in medical dramas when they view them for entertainment. In fact, even though they were not created specifically for education, these programs can be seen as an entertainment-education tool [43, 44]. In entertainment-education shows, viewers are exposed to educational content in entertainment contexts, using visual language that is easy to understand and triggers emotional engagement [45]. The enhanced emotional engagement and cognitive development [5] and moral imagination make students more sensitive to training [22].

--Cambra-Badii, I., Moyano, E., Ortega, I., Josep-E Baños, & Sentí, M. (2021). TV medical dramas: Health sciences students’ viewing habits and potential for teaching issues related to bioethics and professionalism. BMC Medical Education, 21 , 1-11. doi: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-021-02947-7

Paragraph #1.

All of the ideas in this paragraph after the first sentence are drawn directly from Persad. But because the student has placed the citation mid-paragraph, the final two sentences wrongly appear to be the student’s own idea:

In order to advocate for the use of medical television shows in the medical education system, it is also important to look at the current bioethical curriculum. In the more than 3500 hours of training that students undergo in medical school, only about 60 hours are focused on bioethics, health law, and health economics (Persad et al, 2008). It is also problematic that students receive this training before they actually have spent time treating patients in the clinical setting. Most of these hours are taught by instructors without current publications in the field.

Paragraph #2.

All of the italicized ideas in this paragraph are either paraphrased or taken verbatim from Cambra-Badii, et al., but the student does not cite the source at all. As a result, readers will assume that the student has come up with these ideas himself:

Students can absorb the educational messages in medical dramas when they view them for entertainment. It doesn’t matter if the shows were designed for medical students; they can still be a tool for education. In these hybrid entertainment-education shows, viewers are exposed to educational content that triggers an emotional reaction. By allowing for this emotional, cognitive, and moral engagement, the shows make students more sensitive to training . There may be further applications to this type of education: the role of entertainment as a way of encouraging students to consider ethical situations could be extended to other professions, including law or even education.

The student has come up with the final idea in the paragraph (that this type of ethical training could apply to other professions), but because nothing in the paragraph is cited, it reads as if it is part of a whole paragraph of his own ideas, rather than the point that he is building to after using the ideas from the article without crediting the authors.

Acceptable version

In the first paragraph, the student uses signal phrases in nearly every sentence to reference the authors (“According to Persad et al.,” “As the researchers argue,” “They also note”), which makes it clear throughout the paragraph that all of the paragraph’s information has been drawn from Persad et al. The student also uses a clear APA in-text citation to point the reader to the original article. In the second paragraph, the student paraphrases and cites the source’s ideas and creates a clear boundary behind those ideas and his own, which appear in the final paragraph.

In order to advocate for the use of medical television shows in the medical education system, it is also important to look at the current bioethical curriculum. According to Persad et al. (2008), only about one percent of teaching time throughout the four years of medical school is spent on ethics. As the researchers argue, this presents a problem because the students are being taught about ethical issues before they have a chance to experience those issues themselves. They also note that more than sixty percent of instructors teaching bioethics to medical students have no recent publications in the subject.

The research suggests that medical dramas may be a promising source for discussions of medical ethics. Cambra-Badii et al. (2021) explain that even when watched for entertainment, medical shows can help viewers engage emotionally with the characters and may prime them to be more receptive to training in medical ethics. There may be further applications to this type of education: the role of entertainment as a way of encouraging students to consider ethical situations could be extended to other professions, including law or even education.

Inadequate Paraphrase

When you paraphrase, your task is to distill the source's ideas in your own words. It's not enough to change a few words here and there and leave the rest; instead, you must completely restate the ideas in the passage in your own words. If your own language is too close to the original, then you are plagiarizing, even if you do provide a citation.

In order to make sure that you are using your own words, it's a good idea to put away the source material while you write your paraphrase of it. This way, you will force yourself to distill the point you think the author is making and articulate it in a new way. Once you have done this, you should look back at the original and make sure that you have represented the source’s ideas accurately and that you have not used the same words or sentence structure. If you do want to use some of the author's words for emphasis or clarity, you must put those words in quotation marks and provide a citation.

The passage below comes from Michael Sandel’s article, “The Case Against Perfection.” Here’s the article citation in MLA style:

Sandel, Michael. “The Case Against Perfection.” The Atlantic , April 2004, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/04/the-case-against-pe... .

Though there is much to be said for this argument, I do not think the main problem with enhancement and genetic engineering is that they undermine effort and erode human agency. The deeper danger is that they represent a kind of hyperagency—a Promethean aspiration to remake nature, including human nature, to serve our purposes and satisfy our desires. The problem is not the drift to mechanism but the drive to mastery. And what the drive to mastery misses and may even destroy is an appreciation of the gifted character of human powers and achievements.

The version below is an inadequate paraphrase because the student has only cut or replaced a few words: “I do not think the main problem” became “the main problem is not”; “deeper danger” became “bigger problem”; “aspiration” became “desire”; “the gifted character of human powers and achievements” became “the gifts that make our achievements possible.”

The main problem with enhancement and genetic engineering is not that they undermine effort and erode human agency. The bigger problem is that they represent a kind of hyperagency—a Promethean desire to remake nature, including human nature, to serve our purposes and satisfy our desires. The problem is not the drift to mechanism but the drive to mastery. And what the drive to mastery misses and may even destroy is an appreciation of the gifts that make our achievements possible (Sandel).

Acceptable version #1: Adequate paraphrase with citation

In this version, the student communicates Sandel’s ideas but does not borrow language from Sandel. Because the student uses Sandel’s name in the first sentence and has consulted an online version of the article without page numbers, there is no need for a parenthetical citation.

Michael Sandel disagrees with the argument that genetic engineering is a problem because it replaces the need for humans to work hard and make their own choices. Instead, he argues that we should be more concerned that the decision to use genetic enhancement is motivated by a desire to take control of nature and bend it to our will instead of appreciating its gifts.

Acceptable version #2: Direct quotation with citation

In this version, the student uses Sandel’s words in quotation marks and provides a clear MLA in-text citation. In cases where you are going to talk about the exact language that an author uses, it is acceptable to quote longer passages of text. If you are not going to discuss the exact language, you should paraphrase rather than quoting extensively.

The author argues that “the main problem with enhancement and genetic engineering is not that they undermine effort and erode human agency,” but, rather that “they represent a kind of hyperagency—a Promethean desire to remake nature, including human nature, to serve our purposes and satisfy our desires. The problem is not the drift to mechanism but the drive to mastery. And what the drive to mastery misses and may even destroy is an appreciation of the gifts that make our achievements possible” (Sandel).

Uncited Paraphrase

When you use your own language to describe someone else's idea, that idea still belongs to the author of the original material. Therefore, it's not enough to paraphrase the source material responsibly; you also need to cite the source, even if you have changed the wording significantly. As with quoting, when you paraphrase you are offering your reader a glimpse of someone else's work on your chosen topic, and you should also provide enough information for your reader to trace that work back to its original form. The rule of thumb here is simple: Whenever you use ideas that you did not think up yourself, you need to give credit to the source in which you found them, whether you quote directly from that material or provide a responsible paraphrase.

The passage below comes from C. Thi Nguyen’s article, “Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles.”

Here’s the citation for the article, in APA style:

Nguyen, C. (2020). Echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. Episteme, 17 (2), 141-161. doi:10.1017/epi.2018.32

Epistemic bubbles can easily form accidentally. But the most plausible explanation for the particular features of echo chambers is something more malicious. Echo chambers are excellent tools to maintain, reinforce, and expand power through epistemic control. Thus, it is likely (though not necessary) that echo chambers are set up intentionally, or at least maintained, for this functionality (Nguyen, 2020).

The student who wrote the paraphrase below has drawn these ideas directly from Nguyen’s article but has not credited the author. Although she paraphrased adequately, she is still responsible for citing Nguyen as the source of this information.

Echo chambers and epistemic bubbles have different origins. While epistemic bubbles can be created organically, it’s more likely that echo chambers will be formed by those who wish to keep or even grow their control over the information that people hear and understand.

In this version, the student eliminates any possible ambiguity about the source of the ideas in the paragraph. By using a signal phrase to name the author whenever the source of the ideas could be unclear, the student clearly attributes these ideas to Nguyen.

According to Nguyen (2020), echo chambers and epistemic bubbles have different origins. Nguyen argues that while epistemic bubbles can be created organically, it’s more likely that echo chambers will be formed by those who wish to keep or even grow their control over the information that people hear and understand.

Uncited Quotation

When you put source material in quotation marks in your essay, you are telling your reader that you have drawn that material from somewhere else. But it's not enough to indicate that the material in quotation marks is not the product of your own thinking or experimentation: You must also credit the author of that material and provide a trail for your reader to follow back to the original document. This way, your reader will know who did the original work and will also be able to go back and consult that work if they are interested in learning more about the topic. Citations should always go directly after quotations.

The passage below comes from Deirdre Mask’s nonfiction book, The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power.

Here is the MLA citation for the book:

Mask, Deirdre. The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power. St. Martin’s Griffin, 2021.

In New York, even addresses are for sale. The city allows a developer, for the bargain price of $11,000 (as of 2019), to apply to change the street address to something more attractive.

It’s not enough for the student to indicate that these words come from a source; the source must be cited:

After all, “in New York, even addresses are for sale. The city allows a developer, for the bargain price of $11,000 (as of 2019), to apply to change the street address to something more attractive.”

Here, the student has cited the source of the quotation using an MLA in-text citation:

After all, “in New York, even addresses are for sale. The city allows a developer, for the bargain price of $11,000 (as of 2019), to apply to change the street address to something more attractive” (Mask 229).

Using Material from Another Student's Work

In some courses you will be allowed or encouraged to form study groups, to work together in class generating ideas, or to collaborate on your thinking in other ways. Even in those cases, it's imperative that you understand whether all of your writing must be done independently, or whether group authorship is permitted. Most often, even in courses that allow some collaborative discussion, the writing or calculations that you do must be your own. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't collect feedback on your writing from a classmate or a writing tutor; rather, it means that the argument you make (and the ideas you rely on to make it) should either be your own or you should give credit to the source of those ideas.

So what does this mean for the ideas that emerge from class discussion or peer review exercises? Unlike the ideas that your professor offers in lecture (you should always cite these), ideas that come up in the course of class discussion or peer review are collaborative, and often not just the product of one individual's thinking. If, however, you see a clear moment in discussion when a particular student comes up with an idea, you should cite that student. In any case, when your work is informed by class discussions, it's courteous and collegial to include a discursive footnote in your paper that lets your readers know about that discussion. So, for example, if you were writing a paper about the narrator in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and you came up with your idea during a discussion in class, you might place a footnote in your paper that states the following: "I am indebted to the members of my Expos 20 section for sparking my thoughts about the role of the narrator as Greek Chorus in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried ."

It is important to note that collaboration policies can vary by course, even within the same department, and you are responsible for familiarizing yourself with each course's expectation about collaboration. Collaboration policies are often stated in the syllabus, but if you are not sure whether it is appropriate to collaborate on work for any course, you should always consult your instructor.

• The Exception: Common Knowledge
• Other Scenarios to Avoid
• Why Does it Matter if You Plagiarize?
• How to Avoid Plagiarism
• Harvard University Plagiarism Policy

PDFs for This Section

• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Online Library and Citation Tools

• Original article
• Open access
• Published: 26 January 2017

Using Internet based paraphrasing tools: Original work, patchwriting or facilitated plagiarism?

• Ann M. Rogerson 1 &
• Grace McCarthy 1  

International Journal for Educational Integrity volume  13 , Article number:  2 ( 2017 ) Cite this article

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A casual comment by a student alerted the authors to the existence and prevalence of Internet-based paraphrasing tools. A subsequent quick Google search highlighted the broad range and availability of online paraphrasing tools which offer free ‘services’ to paraphrase large sections of text ranging from sentences, paragraphs, whole articles, book chapters or previously written assignments. The ease of access to online paraphrasing tools provides the potential for students to submit work they have not directly written themselves, or in the case of academics and other authors, to rewrite previously published materials to sidestep self-plagiarism. Students placing trust in online paraphrasing tools as an easy way of complying with the requirement for originality in submissions are at risk in terms of the quality of the output generated and possibly of not achieving the learning outcomes as they may not fully understand the information they have compiled. There are further risks relating to the legitimacy of the outputs in terms of academic integrity and plagiarism. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the existence, development, use and detection of use of Internet based paraphrasing tools. To demonstrate the dangers in using paraphrasing tools an experiment was conducted using some easily accessible Internet-based paraphrasing tools to process part of an existing publication. Two sites are compared to demonstrate the types of differences that exist in the quality of the output from certain paraphrasing algorithms, and the present poor performance of online originality checking services such as Turnitin® to identify and link material processed via machine based paraphrasing tools. The implications for student skills in paraphrasing, academic integrity and the clues to assist staff in identifying the use of online paraphrasing tools are discussed.

Introduction

A casual question from a student regarding another student’s contribution to a group work assignment inadvertently led to an explanation of some unusual text submitted for assessment in a previous session. The student queried whether the use of a paraphrasing tool was acceptable in the preparation of a written submission for assessment. Discussing the matter further, the student revealed that they had queried the writing provided by one member of the group as their contribution to the report “did not make sense”. When asked, the group member stated that they had taken material from a journal article and used a fee free Internet paraphrasing tool “so that the words were not the same as the original to avoid plagiarism”. After the clarification, the group did not accept the submission from their team member and instead worked with them to develop an original submission. The group were thanked for their approach to the situation; however this revelation provided a potential explanation for some analogous submissions for previous subjects.

One particular submission from a previous subject instance had phrasing that included “constructive employee execution” and “worker execution audits” for an assessment topic on employee performance reviews. The student was interviewed at the time about why they had submitted work relating the words execution and employees and no satisfactory or plausible explanation was provided. With a new awareness of paraphrasing tools, a Google search revealed in excess of 500,000 hits and a simple statement was entered into one tool to test this connection. Testing the phrase ‘employee performance reviews’ via the top search response revealed an explanation for the unusual student submission as the paraphrase was returned as ‘representative execution surveys’. Choosing to use output generated by these tools begs the question – is it original work, patchwriting or facilitated plagiarism?

Having had our attention drawn to the existence and use of paraphrasing tools it was decided to investigate the phenomenon. What became apparent was that the ease of access to and use of such tools was greater than first thought. Consequently it is important to bring the use and operation of paraphrasing tools to a wider audience to encourage discussion about developing individual writing skills and improve the detection of these emerging practices, thereby raising awareness for students, teachers and institutions.

Paraphrasing and patchwriting

Academic writing is largely reliant on the skill of paraphrasing to demonstrate that the author can capture the essence of what they have read, they understand what they have read and can use the appropriately acknowledged evidence in support of their responses (Fillenbaum, 1970 ; Keck, 2006 , 2014 ; Shi, 2012 ). In higher education a student’s attempts at paraphrasing can provide “insight into how well students read as well as write” (Hirvela & Du, 2013 , p.88). While there appears to be an underlying assumption that students and researchers understand and accept that there is a standard convention about how to paraphrase and appropriately use and acknowledge source texts (Shi, 2012 ), there can be inconsistencies between underlying assumptions in how paraphrases are identified, described and assessed (Keck, 2006 ). Poorer forms of paraphrasing tend to use a simplistic approach where some words are simply replaced with synonyms found through functionality available in word processing software or online dictionaries. This is a form of superficial paraphrasing or ‘close paraphrasing’ (Keck, 2010 ) or ‘patchwriting’ (Howard, 1995 ). The question as to “the exact degree to which text must be modified to be classified as correctly paraphrased” (Roig, 2001 , p.309) is somewhat vague, although Keck ( 2006 ) outlined a Taxonomy of Paraphrase Types where paraphrases are classified in four categories ranging from near copy to substantial revision based on the number of unique links or strings of words.

Research in this area appears to concentrate more specifically on second language (L2) students rather than students per se (For a review see Cumming et al. 2016 ) although many native English writers may also lack the language skills to disseminate academic discourse in their own voice (Bailey & Challen, 2015 ). Paraphrasing is a skill that transcends the written form as it is actually a communication strategy required for all language groups in interpersonal or intergroup interactions and includes oral (Rabab’ah, 2016 ) and visual forms (Chen et al. 2015a ). Paraphrasing allows the same idea to be expressed in different ways as appropriate for the intended audience. It can also be used for persuasion (Suchan, 2014 ), explanations (Patil & Karekatti, 2015 ) and support (Bodie et al. 2016 ). In coaching, paraphrasing is used to ensure that the coach has correctly understood what the coachee is saying, thus allowing the coachee to further clarify their meaning (McCarthy, 2014 ).

Online writing tools

The prevalence and easy access to digital technologies and Internet-based sources have shifted “the way knowledge is constructed, shared and evaluated” (Evering & Moorman, 2012 , p.36). However the quality, efficacy, validity and reliability of some Internet-based material is questionable from an educational standpoint (Niño, 2009 ). Internet-based paraphrasing tools are text processing applications and associated with the same approaches used for machine translation (MT). While MT usually focusses on the translation of one language to another, the broader consideration of text processing can operate between or within language corpuses (Ambati et al. 2010 ).

Internet-based conversion and translation tools are easily accessible, and a number of versions are available to all without cost (Somers, 2012 ). Developments in the treatment of translating natural language as a machine learning problem (known as statistical machine translation - SMT) are leading to continual improvements in this field although the linguistic accuracy varies based on the way each machine ‘learns’ (Lopez, 2008 ). The free tools available via the Internet lack constant updates and improvements as the code is controlled by webmasters and not by experts in MT (Carter & Inkpen, 2012 ). This means advances in methods and algorithms are not always available to individuals relying on free Internet based tools. Consequently there are issues with the quality of MT which may require a level of post-editing to correct the raw output so that it is fit for purpose (Inaba et al. 2007 ).

Post-editing of an online output may be problematic or difficult for an individual with a low level of proficiency in the language they are being taught or assessed in as grammatical inaccuracies and awkward phrasing cannot be easily identified and therefore corrected (Niño, 2009 ). Where a student is considered to lack the necessary linguistic skills, the errors or inaccuracies may be interpreted by assessors as a student having a poor understanding of academic writing conventions rather than recognising that a student may not have written the work themselves. Where an academic is working in an additional language, they may find the detection of the errors or inaccuracies more difficult to identify.

Nor is the issue of paraphrasing or article spinning tool use confined to students. Automated article spinners perform the same way as paraphrasing tools, where text is entered into one field with a ‘spun’ output provided on the same webpage. They were initially developed for re-writing web content to maximise exposure and links to particular sites, without being detected as a duplicate of original content (Madera et al. 2014 ). The underlying purpose appears to allow website owners to “make money from the new, but not strictly original, article” (Lancaster & Clarke, 2009 ). These sites are freely available to students leading to a new label covering the use of these tools as ‘essay spinning’ (Lancaster & Clarke, 2009 , p.26). However, these spinning tools are equally available to academics who may be enticed with the notion of repurposing already published content as a way of increasing research output.

Although the quality levels of MT output varies widely, careful editing and review can address the errors further disguising the original source material (Somers, 2012 ). Roig ( 2016 ) highlights that some forms of text recycling are normal in academic life such as converting conference presentations and theses to journal articles and the textual reuse between editions of books, as long as there is appropriate acknowledgement of the original source. However Roig also points out that authors should be concerned about reusing previous work as with technological advances it will not be long before all forms of academic written work can “be easily identified, retrieved, stored and processed in ways that are inconceivable at the present time” (Roig, 2016 , p.665).

The fact remains that taking another author’s work, processing it through an online paraphrasing tool then submitting that work as ‘original’ is not original work where it involves the use of source texts and materials without acknowledgement. The case of a student submitting work generated by an online tool without appropriate acknowledgement could be considered as a form of plagiarism, and the case of academics trying to reframe texts for alternate publications could be considered as a form of self-plagiarism. Both scenarios could be considered as ‘facilitated plagiarism’ where an individual actively seeks to use some form of easily accessible Internet-based source to prepare or supplement submission material for assessment by others (Granitz, 2007 ; Scanlon & Neumann, 2002 ; Stamatatos, 2011 ). Applying technology to identify where the paraphrasing tools have been used is difficult as detection moves beyond text summarisation and matching to comparison of meaning and evaluation of machine translation (Socher et al. 2011 ).

Furthermore, students using an online paraphrasing system fail to demonstrate their understanding of the assessment task and hence fail to provide evidence of achieving learning outcomes. If they do not acknowledge the source of the text which they have put through the paraphrasing tool, they are also guilty of academic misconduct. On both counts, they would not merit a pass in the subject for which they submit such material.

Methodology

In order to test the quality of output generated by some free Internet based paraphrasing tools and how the originality of the output is assessed by Turnitin®, the following experiment was conducted. A paragraph from an existing publication by this article’s authors from a prior edition of the International Journal of Educations Integrity (IJEI) was selected to be the original source material (McCarthy & Rogerson, 2009 , p.49). To assess how a paraphrasing tool processes an in-text citation, one in-text citation was included (Thatcher, 2008 ). A set of three bibliographic entries from the reference list of the same article were also selected to test how references are interpreted.

As students are more likely to use Google as the Internet search engine of choice and rely on results near the top of page (Spievak & Hayes-Bohanan, 2016 ), this approach was used to identify and select some online paraphrasing tools for testing. The selected paragraph (including the in-text citation), and the selected references were entered into the first two hits on a Google search on www.google.com.au for ‘ paraphrasing tools ’. Consequently the sites used for the experiment were www.paraphrasing-tool.com (Tool 1) and www.goparaphrase.com (Tool 2).

The next step was to compare the outputs from the original journal article material to the outputs of Tool 1 and Tool 2. Exact matches to the original text were observed, tagged and highlighted in grey. Matches between the two paraphrasing outputs that did not match the original source were highlighted by placing the relevant text in a box. Contractions and unusual matches were highlighted by double underlining the text. For the first set of comparisons (paragraph with an in-text citation) the following summary characteristics were calculated: total word counts, total word matches and percentage of similarity to the original paragraph.

In order to identify how Turnitin® interpreted the paragraph and bibliographic outputs from the paraphrasing tools, the original source material and two paraphrasing outputs were uploaded to Turnitin® to check whether the journal publication could be identified. Turnitin® comprises a suite of online educative writing and evaluation tools where assessment tasks can be uploaded, checked and assessed ( www.turnitin.com ). It can be accessed via the Internet or through an interface with an institutional learning management system (LMS). The originality checking area compares a submission against a range of previously published materials and a database of previously submitted assignments. The system generates an originality report where text that matches closely to a previously published or submitted source is highlighted by colour and number with links provided to publicly accessible materials. Matches to papers submitted at other institutions cannot be accessed without the express permission of the owning institution. As Baggaley and Spencer note ( 2005 ) Turnitin® originality reports require careful analysis, for the reports identify text “which may or may not have been correctly attributed” (Baggaley & Spencer, 2005 , p. 56) and cannot be used as the sole determinant of whether or not a work is plagiarised or if source materials have been inappropriately used (Rogerson, 2014 ).

A separate Turnitin® assessment file was created for the experiment on an institutional academic integrity LMS site (Moodle) where a bank of dummy student profiles is available for testing purposes. Three dummy student accounts were used to load the individual ‘outputs’ under two assignment parts. The uploads included one instance of the source material in order to generate comparative originality reports for both the paragraph outputs (loaded under part 1) and the reference list outputs (loaded under part 2). For both sets of outputs the overall Turnitin® similarity percentages and document matches were reviewed for comparison purposes.

The highlighted comparisons of the paragraph outputs are presented in Fig.  1 (comparing Tool 1) and Fig.  2 (comparing Tool 2). The summary characteristics for the paragraph outputs are presented in Table  1 .

Comparison with output from www.paraphrasing-tool.com . Original source materials from McCarthy and Rogerson ( 2009 , p.49) and citing Thatcher ( 2008 )

Comparison with www.goparaphrase.com . Original source materials from McCarthy and Rogerson ( 2009 , p.49) and citing Thatcher ( 2008 )

There are obvious differences in how the online paraphrasing tools have reengineered the original work based on the number of identifiable matches between the original and output texts. For example there are differences in how words such as plagiarism are expressed (Original source: plagiarism ; Tool 1: copyright infringement ; Tool 2: counterfeit ). Both tools have used additional words (Tool 1: additional five words; Tool 2: additional 20 words). The output from Tool 1 has used 77 words or 50% of the words in the original paragraph but these were predominately coordinating conjunctions. Tool 1 has followed the correct use of capitalisations in all words and sentences, however Tool 2 has not capitalised words such as English, and Chinese, but did capitalise seven random words mid-sentence ( Audit, Numerous, Concerning, Likewise, Taking, and What’s ). In addition Tool 2 used contractions ( doesn’t ) and the words ‘ can have ’ in the original have been reprocessed to ‘ camwood ’.

The highlighted comparisons of the reference section outputs are presented in Fig.  3 (comparing the original source with Tool 1 and Tool 2). The summary characteristics of the Turnitin® results for the reference section outputs are presented in Table  2 .

Comparison with three reference list entries. Original source materials from McCarthy and Rogerson ( 2009 , p.56) and citing Carroll and Appleton ( 2005 ), Crisp ( 2007 ), and Dahl ( 2007 )

The Turnitin® results for both the paragraph and reference list uploads identified the original source as 100% match to the online location of the journal supporting Turnitin’s® claim in relation to identifying legitimate academic resources. What is of concern is Turnitin’s® apparent inability to identify the similarities evident by a manual comparison of the source and outputs. Figures  1 and 2 demonstrate the similarities between the original source materials and the output of the tools yet the similarity percentages noted in Table  2 indicate that the re-engineered paragraphs are not detected. One of the current limitations of Turnitin® is that it can detect some but not all cases of synonym replacement (Menai, 2012 ). Despite the patterned nature of the text matching identified through a visual examination of the output, the machine-based originality similarity checking software continues to have limitations in identifying materials that appear to be plagiarised through the use of an online paraphrasing tool or language translation application.

Turnitin® was more successful in matching up bibliographic data to the original source. This was likely due to the fact that the paraphrasing tools did not alter (or barely altered) long strings of numbers, letters and website URLs. The higher Turnitin® match to the output from Tool 1 (72% similarity) was due to the retention of most of the journal name ( International replaced with Global ) however the author name ‘ Crisp’ was altered to ‘ Fresh’ . The output from Tool 2 retained the authors’ last names, but added in 11 additional words to replace author Dahl’s first initial of ‘S’ which would have affected the calculation of similarity percentage. It is interesting that the change to lower case for authors’ initials appeared to impact on Turnitin’s® capacity to identify the authors in the first reference and missed the end of the journal details in the third reference, which also would have contributed to the lower similarity percentage. This led to Turnitin® overlooking 15 word matches and 13 other number and character matches in the Tool 2 submission that were identified as direct matches in the Tool 1 output.

A further examination of both sets of outputs from the paraphrasing tools identified that the tools appear to retain most words and formatting close to punctuation. For example both tools retained [ , policed, ], and the name and intext citation [Thatcher ( 2008 )] in the paragraph comparison, and a string in the reference section comparison [ Integrity, 3, 3–15, from http://www . ]. Without knowing the algorithms for the paraphrasing tools or Turnitin®, patterns such as these can only be observed rather than analysed.

The outputs and comparisons presented in Figs.  1 and 2 appear more like patchwriting rather than paraphrasing. Li and Casanave ( 2012 ) argue that patchwriting is an indication that the student is a novice writer still learning how to write and understand the “complexities of appropriate textual borrowing” (Li & Casanave, 2012 , p.177) although their study was confined to L2 students submitting assessment material in English. They further argue that deeming text as patchwriting does not attract the same negative connotations of plagiarism nor would it attract the same penalties. In our examples the patterns of text, language and phrasing can identify a student requiring learning support. This determination is likely due to the presence of poor expression, grammatical errors and areas of confused meaning which are sometimes referred to as a ‘word salad’. The term word salad is drawn from psychology but has been adopted in areas such as MT to classify unintelligible and random collections of words and phrases (Definition:word salad, 2016 ). Word salads are produced by MT “when translation engines fail to do a complete analysis of their input” (Callison-Burch & Flournoy, 2001 , p.1).

While the output from Tool 1 is mainly intelligible, some of the results from Tool 2 could be classified as word salads, for example in the last line the following string of words was produced ‘ duplicating Likewise an approach about Taking in starting with What's more paying admiration to previous aces’ . If an unintelligible string of words was submitted as part of an assessment task it may be a reason to have a conversation with a student to understand how they are going about their writing, and to determine if paraphrasing tools or article spinners have contributed. Where a citation is provided, it may be a case of a student having a poor understanding of academic writing conventions. Where there is no citation or any reference to the original source the situation may warrant investigation under academic integrity institutional policies and procedures.

If the percentage calculations presented in Fig.  1 are compared with Kecks ( 2006 ) Taxonomy of Paraphrase Types , the outputs from the online tools would fall into the category of paraphrases with minimal revision when compared to the original text (Keck, 2014 , p.9). The manual comparison of documents in this experiment indicates a level of patchwriting, however Turnitin® could not establish a relationship between the original source paragraph and the machine generated paraphrasing-tool outputs. It is more akin to some of the plagiarism behaviours described by Walker ( 1998 , p.103) such as “illicit paraphrasing” where material is reused without any source acknowledgement or even “sham paraphrasing” where text is directly copied but includes a source acknowledgement. This is a cause for concern as the comparison with the online paraphrasing tool output was only possible as the original source was known. It is not just a question of percentages but in the patterns clearly visible in Figs.  1 , 2 and 3 . Consequently, this set of experiments indicates a level of similarity that is concerning in two key areas, firstly where the original source is not acknowledged or identifiable, and secondly if this level of similarity were found in student work, it would suggest that the student may not have understood the material, or at least that he/she has not demonstrated their understanding.

Manual analysis and academic judgement are integral parts of the process of detection of plagiarised materials (Bretag & Mahmud, 2009b ), and are heavily reliant on the level of experience an assessor has in identifying clues, markers and textual patterns (Rogerson & Bassanta, 2016 ). In this experiment the original source of the plagiarised materials would be difficult to identify, however the presence of clues and patterns may be sufficient to motivate a lecturer or tutor to initiate an initial conversation with a student to determine whether the work is actually the student’s own (Somers et al. 2006 ).

A further investigation of the results from the Google search on ‘paraphrasing tools’ identified that many of the sites have multiple public faces—that is that there are additional URLs that direct users back to the same paraphrasing machine. The purpose behind the existence of the sites is not clear. The sites do carry Internet advertising so their existence and multiple faces may be related to a way to generate income. Alarmingly the sites examined in this study showed advertisements for higher education institutions which could be misinterpreted by users as tacit approval for the sites and their output. Other sites highlight that rudimentary paraphrasing tools are highly inaccurate but promote their paid services to correct the output—i.e. a process that could be interpreted as another form of contracted plagiarism (Clarke & Lancaster, 2013 ).

One of the questions that arises in assessing work as plagiarised is associated with intentionality—that is, did the person intend to deceive another about the originality of work (Lee, 2016 ). In the case of students “it is the inappropriate research and writing practices and the resulting misappropriate or misuse of information that leads students to breach academic integrity expectations” (Pfannenstiel, 2010 , p.43). Pfannenstiel’s use of the word ‘expectations’ is both interesting and enlightening as it is probable that differences in expectations is what is at the crux of the issue with online paraphrasing or article spinning tools. Expectations can be influenced by cultural and educational backgrounds, a lack of understanding or skills in paraphrasing and linguistic and language resources (Cumming et al., 2016 ; Sun, 2012 ). For example: a student may sincerely believe that as they have not submitted an exact copy of the original source, and that there is no evidence of match to the original source via online originality checking software that they have met the objective of submitting original work. Conversely, an academic may reasonably consider this to be direct plagiarism as the student copied the original work of someone else and reused it without any acknowledgement (Davis & Morley, 2015 ). This area of confusion was noted in Shi’s ( 2012 ) study where a student stated that using a translation of an original text did not require acknowledgment of the original source as the translation was not directly the original source. (Shi, 2012 , p.140).

While Turnitin® cannot currently connect the writing and the paraphrases in this experiment, it and other MT tools are in a constant state of evolution and their ability to identify poor quality machine translated text will continue to improve over time (Carter & Inkpen, 2012 ). In order to test the progress, Carter and Inkpen ( 2012 ) suggest that multiple tests of the same piece of text be conducted over a period of years to measure both the quality of output and the ability to detect their use. The literature reviewed in this area focusses on the detection of phrases and sentences, with Socher et al. ( 2011 ) noting that once detection switches from phrases to full sentences a comparison of meaning is more difficult for a machine to learn.

This article does not attempt to outline all the work being undertaken in this area, instead it highlights that there is research being undertaken to develop and further enhance MT (encoding and decoding) and detection of MT use. This includes computers learning computational semantics and managing expanded vocabularies to move beyond recognition of specific tasks (Kiros et al., 2015 ). Turnitin®’s ability to match large sections of text outside of their own repository of previously submitted assessment tasks is very useful because the majority of academic materials that can be plagiarised are text based (Bretag & Mahmud, 2009a ). Using text-matching as a basis for detection instead of semantic matching means that uses of online paraphrasing tools and article spinners continues to be difficult for technology to detect at this time. Therefore for the foreseeable future the onus of detection of unoriginal material remains with academics, lecturers and teachers (Rogerson, 2014 ).

Further confusion arises when institutions develop computer based paraphrasing tools as a way of developing English language writing skills for L2 students. Aware of the difficulties that L2 learners have with paraphrasing tasks, Chen, Huang, Chang and Liou developed a web and corpus based ‘paraphrasing assistant system’ designed to suggest paraphrases with corresponding Chinese translations (Chen et al. 2015b , p.23). Students familiar with using such a system in their home country may seek similar assistance if studying abroad. Without access to an approved technology they may seek to discover similar assistance tools on the Internet—where they can easily locate the paraphrasing tools identified in this experiment. These same students may also lack the judgement skills to discern the difference between the output from approved and poor quality online tools whether they are paraphrasing tools, article spinners or language translators.

Implications for practice: working with students

One way of confronting or approaching this issue is to openly demonstrate to students the errors and inaccuracies that can result in using online tools (Niño, 2009 ). Communicating proactively about the issue provides students with a greater awareness of the problems that can result from using online paraphrasing sites as well as ensuring that students understand that they should not expect to graduate unless they can demonstrate they understand the course material. Their current and future employers have the right to expect that for example, a student graduating with a degree in marketing will be able to articulate their understanding of marketing concepts. Proactive approaches can also promote learning development and support services offered by the educational institution providing students with advice about paraphrasing and strategies for improving their writing skills and therefore avoiding problematic practices. This educates students about alternatives to using online machine text generation tools.

Some students have expressed concerns that other students will continue to take advantage of technology based aids even though they had been told not to use them and knowing that to do so could be classified as cheating (Burnett et al. 2016 ). Students who do not cheat but put in the effort themselves are usually outraged if fellow students get away with cheating and may even bring cases they notice to the institutions’ attention (Warnock, 2006 ). This was the case with the casual comment by the student who brought the online paraphrasing tools to our attention. The actions of our students working with their group member to develop their own work also demonstrates how honest students can be allies in upholding the academic standards of the institution (Bretag & Mahmud, 2016 ). If the benefits of learning and developing individual paraphrasing skills are linked to the broader benefits of effective interpersonal and intergroup communication, the open approach to confronting and discussing the issue may be more successful.

Implications for practice: working with staff

The development of reading, summarising and paraphrasing skills are not the sole responsibility of learning developers. Educators need to embed academic skills in lectures and tutorials and provide feedback on student progress measured through effective assessment (Sambell et al. 2013 ). Clear assessment requirements and use of rubrics indicate the importance and differences to grades for the various levels of academic skills (Atkinson & Lim, 2013 ) providing students with a reason to develop their skills. Effective feedback assists students in identifying where they have achieved certain levels of academic skills and which skills require further development (Evans, 2013 ).

A further approach to tackling the issue is to re-design assessment tasks to include an oral component where the student has to present a summary of their argument and answer questions. This approach can ensure that the student understands and has achieved the learning outcomes, although it is no guarantee of the student’s academic integrity in preparing for their presentation. Finally, academics can also be trained to look for linguistic markers indicating the possibility of the use of such online paraphrasing tools so that they can investigate cases appropriately. Such markers include sentences that do not make sense, odd use of capitalisations in the middle of sentences, unusual phrases and, in the case where students have reprocessed work from old textbooks, out of date and superseded reference material.

Conclusion and recommendations for further research

This study has demonstrated that students can use online paraphrasing tools or article spinners in ways that avoid detection by originality checking software such as Turnitin®. Whether or not it is the student’s intent to avoid plagiarism is not the issue examined here. Rather, the intent of this paper is to ensure that those involved in teaching and learning are aware of the practice, can detect its use and initiate meaningful conversations with students about the perils of using such tools. There is a fine line between use of paraphrasing tools and the use of tools to plagiarise, however it is only through open discussion that students will learn to appreciate the benefits of articulating their understanding in their own words with the appropriate acknowledgement of sources.

Paraphrasing is a skill that transcends an ability to interpret and restate an idea or concept in writing. It is an important skill that needs to be introduced and developed in terms of written, visual and oral forms. The capacity of students and academics to rephrase, frame and restate the ideas and intentions of original authors themselves with appropriate acknowledgements of sources is fundamental to the principles of academic integrity and personal development. The proliferation of fee-based and free Internet-based tools designed to re-engineer text is a concern. Of greater concern is that tools contracted to identify original source materials cannot necessarily be used at this time to identify where writing has been repurposed. Regardless of the ease of access to online text regeneration tools and the work being done to try to electronically detect their use, individuals should be encouraged to improve their own paraphrasing expertise as an essential part of individual skill development in and beyond educational institutions.

Further work is needed to identify linguistic markers indicating use of online paraphrasing tools such as those identified in this study. Academics are already time poor and while they may be strongly in favour of upholding academic standards, they may also be reluctant to undertake time-consuming investigations into possible misconduct. They need encouragement to integrate the observation of textual patterns and markers into their grading and assessment practice. Research is also needed in exploring the most effective techniques or combination of educational, deterrent and punitive techniques and machine detection tools to combat the use of online paraphrasing tools and article spinners and other forms of academic malpractice. Such developments will assist in directing the focus of writing efforts back to where it should be – which is individuals writing and submitting their own work with appropriate acknowledgements.

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Rogerson, A.M., McCarthy, G. Using Internet based paraphrasing tools: Original work, patchwriting or facilitated plagiarism?. Int J Educ Integr 13 , 2 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-016-0013-y

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Is paraphrasing plagiarism?

Is paraphrasing plagiarism? The short answer is: it depends. What defines the difference between the original text based on respectful resources and the plagiarized one is the quality of information processing.

Is it illegal to paraphrase?

Definitely, it is not illegal to paraphrase. However, one should not confuse proper paraphrasing with synonymization . You need actually to work with information, absorb it, and transform it into something new instead of just replacing the words.

The common mistakes leading to poor paraphrasing are:

• to maintain the author’s sentence structure and tone of voice, repeating their method of expression;
• to apply only minor changes to the structure;
• not to use quotation marks to indicate the phrases coming from the author directly;
• to mix up paraphrasing with synonymization, which, when overused, is considered plagiarism.

The thing is, modern plagiarism-checking tools can detect these kinds of changes and define your work as plagiarised. Let’s pay attention to an example from PurdueOWL website :

When we scan the poorly paraphrased version, it is evident that rewording is not good enough to trick the detector. PlagiarismCheck.org still finds similarities:

Can you avoid plagiarism by paraphrasing?

Actually, paraphrasing is a legitimate way to borrow others’ thoughts. You just need to learn how to use it wisely and moderately.

1 Develop critical thinking and a unique writing style. Enhance your paper with original examples, rely on your experience, and strive to find a new angle or approach to the subject. Paraphrase the part of the source you need to ground your ideas, but spice it up with new details.

2 Always credit your sources. Use quotation marks when you provide direct citations, and pay attention to proper attribution.

3 Dig into the topic. Read several sources, formulate a comprehensive impression, and distill the essence of the subject instead of rewriting a particular text.

4 Run a   plagiarism check . Use a reliable tool to catch potential plagiarism and edit the paper before you submit it to the professor.

So, let’s sum it up. Is it plagiarism if you paraphrase? No, if you do it properly.

How can you be sure you have done a good job? Use a plagiarism detector to highlight the text’s parts requiring more effort and polish your paper.

PlagiarismCheck.org is here to help! Try it for free to check your paraphrasing skills, use AI checker GPT , and empower your writing.

Discover how PlagiarismCheck.org can empower your workflow!

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Academic Integrity at MIT

A handbook for students, search form, avoiding plagiarism - paraphrasing.

In writing papers, you will paraphrase more than you will quote. For a report or research paper, you may need to gather background information that is important to the paper but not worthy of direct quotation. Indeed, in technical writing direct quotation is rarely used.

Exactly what does "paraphrase" mean?

It means taking the words of another source and restating them, using your own vocabulary. In this way, you keep the meaning of the original text, but do not copy its exact wording.

What strategies can I use to paraphrase?

Use synonyms for all words that are not generic. Words like world, food, or science are so basic to our vocabulary that is difficult to find a synonym.

Change the structure of the sentence.

Change the voice from active to passive and vice versa.    

Change clauses to phrases and vice versa.

Change parts of speech.

A good paraphrase combines a number of strategies: the goal is to rephrase the information so that it appears in your words, not those of the author.

Example 4: Using Multiple Strategies to Paraphrase

Example 5: Unacceptable Paraphrase

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Is it Legal to Use a Paraphrasing Tool to Avoid Plagiarism

Originally published: March 28, 2022 09:35:16 AM, updated: June 14, 2023 10:06:00 AM

Using a free paraphrasing tool can be very helpful when writing content. You can use it to make your content unique. You can also learn new words and see the different ways in which you can structure your sentences.

But, seeing how easy it is to use these tools, you could be a bit worried about whether what you are doing is legal or not. Not to worry. That is what we will discuss in this post.

The Right and Wrong Types of Paraphrasing

There are two types of paraphrasing.

The first type is the one in which the job is done thoroughly, and the final content does not bear a very major resemblance to the original text.

The other type of paraphrasing (and this is the bad kind) is the one in which someone just changes a few words from the original content and then uses it as it is his own.

Of these two types, the first one is legal.

In other words, if a person paraphrases some content then and adequately shares it elsewhere without citing the source, there will be nothing wrong with it.

With this type of content, even if someone were to check Plagiarism, they would not get any type of matches whatsoever. But, with partially paraphrased content, it is important to mention the original author as well.

Is it Legal to Use a Paraphrasing Tool to Avoid Plagiarism?

As we mentioned above, paraphrasing is legal if it is done correctly. With genuine and legitimate paraphrasing, there is no malicious intent involved.

The writer does not aim to use someone else's content as his own wrongfully. He merely wishes to write a certain idea or concept in different words.

However, we should mention that while proper paraphrasing won't be considered Plagiarism, it's not something that you should resort to habitually.

In certain scenarios, it is fine to paraphrase a few paragraphs. But it is not good to adopt this as a permanent practice. A writer should come up with original and unique stuff and not rely on other people's content.

Mind you, there is a significant difference between taking inspiration and paraphrasing. To take inspiration means to learn from some content and then to come up with a completely new and unique way to explain it.

And doing this is completely fine from both aspects: legal and ethical. Without taking inspiration, no one would learn anything.

Recommended video : How to Paraphrase in 5 Easy Steps | Scribbr

How to Use a Free Paraphrasing Tool to Paraphrase Content Properly?

Improperly paraphrased content will not be recognized as unique either by the readers or the search engine. If you don't know how to paraphrase content properly, you need to get familiar with it.

Here is how you can do it in a few simple steps:

Choose a good paraphrasing tool . This part is important. A lot of tools available online will take your content and mess it up…instead of rewording it.

We will look at a few good tools in detail later on, but for now, we can name a few, such as paphraser.io, rephrase.info, searchengingereports.net, etc.

Paraphrase the content . After you have chosen your tool, you will need to use it and rephrase the original text.

Check for errors . Up till now, the two steps mentioned were more or less what you usually have to do when you paraphrase any content.

However, you have to make sure that everything is on point when you want to do it properly. Fixing grammatical and spelling mistakes is the first step to that.

Don't retain the sentence structure . And finally, to make sure that your paraphrased content is not recognizable, you have to change the original structure. You can do this by moving the paragraphs around a bit and breaking the sentences down into smaller parts.

Some changes to the structure will be affected by the paraphraser tool itself, but most of it you will have to do yourself.

If you follow the first two steps of this post only, you will get paraphrased content, but it will not be thorough and complete.

Tools That You Can Try for Paraphrasing Content

The steps discussed above are pretty easy to follow. However, when it comes to choosing the right paraphrasing tool, you could face a hitch.

To help you pick the right tool for your paraphrasing needs, we have come up with this brief list:

Paraphraser.io is a great free paraphrasing tool. It comes with a free version that users can enjoy indefinitely without signing up or registering.

The main reason why we are mentioning this tool at the top of our list is because of its human-like functionality.

We mentioned earlier that there are a lot of tools online that jumble the meaning of the given text and make it mean something completely different than what was intended.

However, Paraphraser.io runs on an exceptional algorithm that allows it to replace certain words with proper synonyms while retaining the original context.

You also get the option of choosing between two different modes (three, if you are a premium user), which include: Fluency, Standard, and Creative (premium only).

Key Features

• Free to start
• Different modes available
• Human-like functionality
• Multiple integrated tools

Prepostseo.com is not only a paraphrasing tool. There are a lot of different utilities related to content optimization and SEO that you can use with it. And luckily for us, they also have a paraphraser tool that is available for free.

There are a lot of excellent features on this app as well. For one, it has four different modes, all of which can be enjoyed by free users.

They include Simple, Creative, Advanced, and Fluency. These different modes essentially decide the number and type of changes that will be made to the given text.

The process is quick to complete, and the results can easily be copied.

If you want to use some other tools, like 'Check Plagiarism,' 'Checker Grammar,' and 'Summarize Content,' you can easily do it by clicking on the buttons in the bottom bar.

• Free to use all the way
• Extra tools available, i.e., plagiarism checker, grammar checker, etc.
• Completely web-based
• Quick conversion

Plagiarismremover.net has, like the two other tools discussed on this list, multiple utilities that you can use. Their 'Article Rewriter' tool is an excellent paraphraser that is available for free.

We copied some text from a website and paraphrased it using this tool. After paraphrasing, the resulting content did not get recognized as plagiarized.

Plagiarismremover.net offers a decent number of file uploading and language options. As for the process itself, it was fast and only took up a few seconds.

• Quick to work
• Gave plagiarism-free results
• Integrated plagiarism and grammar checking tools
• Multiple languages supported

Paraphrasingtool.ai is an advanced online platform that hosts a variety of innovative tools designed to assist writers in creating, modifying, and polishing their content. Its flagship product is a paraphrasing tool with unique features such as audio paraphrasing, four different tonal settings, eight paraphrasing modes, and a speech-to-text paraphrasing capability.

This versatile tool can effortlessly rephrase up to 20,000 characters simultaneously, paving the way for more efficient content production. This tool also has an AI Text Editor enriched with many features.

It can simplify complex sentences, expand upon ideas, convert paragraphs into bullet points, provide examples, and offer explanations, among other features. This streamlines the editing process, making it more intuitive and user-friendly.

In addition to these utilities, Paraphrasingtool.ai also offers a plagiarism checker that can check up to 25,000 words in one go. This tool is invaluable for writers seeking originality and authenticity in their work, allowing them to uphold the highest academic integrity and professionalism standards.

• Freemium Tool
• Multiple paraphrasing modes
• Multiple tones
• Multilingual support
• Plagiarism checker available
• Decent character limit
• Multiple input options (Audio paraphrasing, Speech-to-text paraphrasing, and extracting text from images)
• AI text editor

What are the key elements of paraphrasing?

The two elements of paraphrasing are:

1. Giving an author credit for their thoughts. 2. Putting these concepts into your own words rather than the authors.

What three steps are involved in paraphrasing?

After reading the original content and understanding it, put it aside. Change the text's structure by altering the introduction, the sentence lengths and/or orders, the starting sentence, etc. Note the key ideas or points using your memory. Don't duplicate the text word for word.

What is not allowed in paraphrasing?

It is not sufficient to just substitute a few words and leave out others when paraphrasing. You must fully comprehend the meaning of the expression before translating it into your own words.

When should you not paraphrase?

Paraphrasing is considered plagiarism if you don't give the original author full credit. If your text is too similar to the original words (even if you cite the source), paraphrasing is considered plagiarism. Quote a sentence or phrase rather than just copy it verbatim.

What to change when paraphrasing?

Don't just take the original sentence and replace some of the terms with synonyms when paraphrasing. Try reformulating the statement instead (for example, switching from active to passive or beginning at a different point) and incorporating details from several phrases into one.

Paraphrasing any content properly can take time, but it is worth it. Keep in mind that you must give credit through a citation for the author's original idea when paraphrasing.

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This AI-powered paraphraser lets you rewrite text in your own words. Use it to  paraphrase articles, essays, and other pieces of text. You can also use it to rephrase sentences and find synonyms for individual words. And the best part? It’s all 100% free!

What's paraphrasing?

Paraphrasing involves expressing someone else’s ideas or thoughts in your own words while maintaining the original meaning. Paraphrasing tools can help you quickly reword text by replacing certain words with synonyms or restructuring sentences. They can also make your text more concise, clear, and suitable for a specific audience. Paraphrasing is an essential skill in academic writing and professional communication. 

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• Accurate: Reliable and grammatically correct paraphrasing.
• No sign-up required: We don’t need your data for you to use our paraphrasing tool.
• Super simple to use: A simple interface even your grandma could use.
• It’s 100% free: No hidden costs, just unlimited use of a free paraphrasing tool.

Features of the paraphrasing tool

Rephrase individual sentences

With the Scribbr Paraphrasing Tool, you can easily reformulate individual sentences.

• Write varied headlines
• Rephrase the subject line of an email
• Create unique image captions

Paraphrase a whole text

Our paraphraser can also help with longer passages (up to 125 words per input). Upload your document or copy your text into the input field.

With one click, you can reformulate the entire text.

Find synonyms with ease

Simply click on any word to open the interactive thesaurus.

• Choose from a list of suggested synonyms
• Find the synonym with the most appropriate meaning
• Replace the word with a single click

Paraphrase in two ways

• Standard: Offers a compromise between modifying and preserving the meaning of the original text
• Fluency: Improves language and corrects grammatical mistakes.

Upload different types of documents

Upload any Microsoft Word document, Google Doc, or PDF into the paraphrasing tool.

Download or copy your results

After you’re done, you can easily download or copy your text to use somewhere else.

Powered by AI

The paraphrasing tool uses natural language processing to rewrite any text you give it. This way, you can paraphrase any text within seconds.

Avoid accidental plagiarism

Want to make sure your document is plagiarism-free? In addition to our paraphrasing tool, which will help you rephrase sentences, quotations, or paragraphs correctly, you can also use our anti-plagiarism software to make sure your document is unique and not plagiarized.

Scribbr’s anti-plagiarism software enables you to:

• Detect plagiarism more accurately than other tools
• Ensure that your paraphrased text is valid
• Highlight the sources that are most similar to your text

Start for free

How does this paraphrasing tool work?

1. put your text into the paraphraser, 2. select your method of paraphrasing, 3. select the quantity of synonyms you want, 4. edit your text where needed, who can use this paraphrasing tool.

Paraphrasing tools can help students to understand texts and improve the quality of their writing. 

Create original lesson plans, presentations, or other educational materials.

Researchers

Explain complex concepts or ideas to a wider audience. 

Journalists

Quickly and easily rephrase text to avoid repetitive language.

Copywriters

By using a paraphrasing tool, you can quickly and easily rework existing content to create something new and unique.

Bloggers can rewrite existing content to make it their own.

Writers who need to rewrite content, such as adapting an article for a different context or writing content for a different audience.

A paraphrasing tool lets you quickly rewrite your original content for each medium, ensuring you reach the right audience on each platform.

The all-purpose paraphrasing tool

The Scribbr Paraphrasing Tool is the perfect assistant in a variety of contexts.

Brainstorming

Writer’s block? Use our paraphraser to get some inspiration.

Professional communication

Produce creative headings for your blog posts or PowerPoint slides.

Academic writing

Paraphrase sources smoothly in your thesis or research paper.

Social media

Craft memorable captions and content for your social media posts.

Paraphrase text online, for free

The Scribbr Paraphrasing Tool lets you rewrite as many sentences as you want—for free.

Write with 100% confidence 👉

Ask our team.

Want to contact us directly? No problem.  We  are always here for you.

• Email [email protected]
• Start live chat
• Call +1 (510) 822-8066
• WhatsApp +31 20 261 6040

Frequently asked questions

The act of putting someone else’s ideas or words into your own words is called paraphrasing, rephrasing, or rewording. Even though they are often used interchangeably, the terms can mean slightly different things:

Paraphrasing is restating someone else’s ideas or words in your own words while retaining their meaning. Paraphrasing changes sentence structure, word choice, and sentence length to convey the same meaning.

Rephrasing may involve more substantial changes to the original text, including changing the order of sentences or the overall structure of the text.

Rewording is changing individual words in a text without changing its meaning or structure, often using synonyms.

It can. One of the two methods of paraphrasing is called “Fluency.” This will improve the language and fix grammatical errors in the text you’re paraphrasing.

Paraphrasing and using a paraphrasing tool aren’t cheating. It’s a great tool for saving time and coming up with new ways to express yourself in writing.  However, always be sure to credit your sources. Avoid plagiarism.  

If you don’t properly cite text paraphrased from another source, you’re plagiarizing. If you use someone else’s text and paraphrase it, you need to credit the original source. You can do that by using citations. There are different styles, like APA, MLA, Harvard, and Chicago. Find more information about citing sources here.

Paraphrasing without crediting the original author is a form of plagiarism , because you’re presenting someone else’s ideas as if they were your own.

However, paraphrasing is not plagiarism if you correctly cite the source . This means including an in-text citation and a full reference, formatted according to your required citation style .

As well as citing, make sure that any paraphrased text is completely rewritten in your own words.

Plagiarism means using someone else’s words or ideas and passing them off as your own. Paraphrasing means putting someone else’s ideas in your own words.

So when does paraphrasing count as plagiarism?

• Paraphrasing is plagiarism if you don’t properly credit the original author.
• Paraphrasing is plagiarism if your text is too close to the original wording (even if you cite the source). If you directly copy a sentence or phrase, you should quote it instead.
• Paraphrasing  is not plagiarism if you put the author’s ideas completely in your own words and properly cite the source .

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Top 10 Paraphrasing Tools in 2024 (Free and Paid)

In this article, you will find the truly best tools for paraphrasing that understand the thoughts and ideas behind the text to paraphrase without losing the text’s meaning.

His favorite color is black. He likes black the most. Do you notice the same idea is expressed with a mere change of words in these two sentences? Well, this explains the concept of paraphrasing, i.e., expressing a common idea in different ways. This technique helps compose articles, reports, assignments, or other forms of content quickly and minimizes the chances of errors, making the top 10 paraphrasing tools essential for writers, students, or anyone with similar interests.

If you are also looking for such tools, you can focus all your attention on this write-up. We have dived deeper into all the available tools to paraphrase, compared them with each other (based on many parameters, such as ease-of-use, features, etc), and listed the best ones in the subsequent section of this article. Let us get started with it right away without wasting your priceless time.

List of the Top Paraphrasing Tools in 2024

Below are our 10 top picks for the best paid and free paraphrasing tools you can use to

create grammatically correct and engaging pieces of writing for various purposes.

1. WordTune

Let us introduce you to WordTune. It is among the best free paraphrasing software with powerful AI (Artificial Intelligence)-based capabilities. This tool can help you level up your writing game with a professional rewrite feature to help you write with confidence, a customizable writing assistant to enhance your productivity , and the following remarkable features.

Key features of WordTune

• There are many templates to help you create quality emails, LinkedIn posts, headlines, and other content from scratch with a single click
• You can use the summarizer to summarize YouTube videos , articles, PDFs, etc., to save time and focus only on the parts you think are important
• WordTune lets you create a personalized knowledge base, find the needed answers using an AI-based semantic search

Also Read: Best Free AI Content Generator & AI Writers

2. QuillBot

Here comes QuillBot on our list of the best free paraphrasing tools for students and professionals alike. Popular because of the excellent identification of grammatical errors, accurate correction suggestions, and retention of the original meaning when paraphrasing, QuillBot boasts the following features to delight users.

Key features of QuillBot

• There are many paraphrasing modes, such as Fluency, Standard, Shorten, Creative, and Expand
• QuillBot has an easy to navigate beginner-friendly interface
• You can translate the content in over 6 languages
• There is an in-built thesaurus tool to help you customize your paraphrases
• It displays details like percent change and word count

3. Paraphrase Tool

We cannot skip the Paraphrase Tool when discussing good paraphrasing tools. It helps you find the best words to match your expression with paraphrase variations in multiple writing modes. Moreover, this software offers a composer that allows you to create paragraphs from keywords quickly and efficiently for articles, essays, cover letters, and other 500+ types of writing in more than 100 languages. Furthermore, the following features contribute to making Paraphrase Tool one of the best tools.

Key features of Paraphrase Tool

• It offers a plagiarism checker for more than 50 languages to ensure your text is unique and 100% plagiarism-free
• There are over 20 modes, including a free grammar checker, a summarize tool, text simplification, and a sentence-shortening tool

Also Read: Best Free Grammarly Alternatives

4. Paraphrasing.io

You can go to Paraphrasing.io if you are looking for online free paraphrasing software to paraphrase text for free. The most unique feature of this tool is that it allows you to drop text files into the paraphrase pane for easy paraphrasing. Moreover, it offers a plagiarism checker to ensure the content is original, a readability tool to make sure the content is clear and easily understood, and the following helpful features.

Key features of Paraphrasing.io

• The summarizer tool of Paraphrasing.io allows you to create a concise and shorter version of your text
• There are four paraphrasing modes to help you rewrite the content according to your requirements. These modes include Regular, Academic, Formal, and Creative modes of paraphrasing
• You can correct punctuation, grammar, diction, and spelling errors to improve the quality of your content
• It supports over 15 languages

Let us meet Jasper, one of the top 10 paraphrasing tools. Jasper focuses on comprehension and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to generate text resembling human writing. Writers, content creators, and anyone wanting to make their writing clear and impressive can use Jasper to rephrase text without changing its original meaning. Moreover, the availability of an in-built grammar checker, Chrome extension, and the following features contribute to the reasons we have included this software in our list.

Key features of Jasper

• You can use Jasper to generate content other than only paraphrasing
• This software supports more than 30 languages
• The interface of Jasper is friendly enough for beginners

Also Read: Best SpeedWrite Alternative to Use 

6. TextCortex

Next, we have TextCortex on our list of the best free paraphrasing tools. It boasts integrability with 50.000+ platforms, accurate grammar and spelling checking to ensure no error remains in your text, styling improvements using AI, and the following remarkable features to attract a wide range of users across the globe.

Key features of TextCortex

• Language is not a barrier with TextCortex, it supports more than 25 languages
• You can choose from 1000+ AI prompts to create faultless and engaging content
• The interface of TextCortex is fast and easy to use
• TextCortex’s plagiarism checker ensures originality in your content
• There are many other content creation options other than only paraphrasing

7. Rephrase

Rephrase bags the next spot on our list of the top 10 paraphrasing tools you can use for free. This software allows you to choose from Fluency, Standard, Creative, Smart, and Formal modes to create coherent and grammatically correct paraphrased text. Moreover, support for multiple languages and the following features make it good software.

Key features of Rephrase

• It highlights the changes and allows you to manually adjust them
• The user interface of Rephrase is beginner-friendly
• Rephrase supports multiple file formats
• You can effortlessly download paraphrased files
• This software suggests synonyms of the most commonly used words to make your writing creative

Do you wish to break your writer’s block? If yes, you can try WordAi, i.e., a good paraphrasing tool to compose more than 1000 rewrites of your original article to come up with the perfect piece of writing. Moreover, bulk rewrite (you can upload and rewrite all your articles at once), support for HTML content, an option to bulk download your rewrites, and the following features contribute to making this software a great addition to our list.

Key features of WordAi

• WordAi allows API access so that you can add article rewriting to any workflow
• You can view and edit your rewrites in rich-text and HTML
• It allows you to import completely new articles about any topic with a single click
• This software humanizes your content so that it can pass as a human in AI detectors
• It boasts an advanced algorithm and machine-learning technique that understands a text’s context, syntax, and grammar before paraphrasing it
• There is an in-built spell and grammar checker      

Also Read: Best Free Offline Dictionary Software For Windows 10/11 PC

9. Hypotenuse AI

Are you a content marketer or an agency looking for the best free paraphrasing tools? If yes, you can try Hypotenuse AI. It helps you create SEO-optimized blog articles, product descriptions, social media posts and ads, and more than 20 other types of content. Moreover, the availability of an in-built fact checker to remove wrong/inaccurate information and the following features make Hypotenuse AI an excellent choice.

Key features of Hypotenuse AI

• You can summarize and paraphrase content in a single click
• There is an image generation tool
• This software can be integrated with other tools, such as Shopify and WordPress

10. Writesonic

Your search for the top tools for paraphrasing may end at Writesonic. This cloud-based free software helps you create plagiarism-free content in seconds. You can use this tool to generate many content types, such as product descriptions, blog posts, social media posts, and a lot more. Additionally, a user-friendly interface and the following features are other reasons for including this software in our list.

Key features of Writesonic

• The interface of Writesonic is beginner-friendly and easy to use
• It allows effortless collaboration among team members
• Writesonic is an all-in-one tool with a paraphrase, sentence expander, text summarizer, story generator, and landing page generator

Also Read: Best Free Document Scanner Software for Windows 10

Wrapping Up the Top 10 Paraphrasing Tools

This article did a rundown of the top 10 tools you can use for paraphrasing text for free or by paying an economical price. You can go through the features of each of these tools to choose the one that fits your needs perfectly. However, if you have any questions, doubts, or suggestions, please feel free to drop us a comment. Also, remember to subscribe to our newsletter, join our social media community, and bookmark this blog for more helpful software recommendations, tech tips, and guides to solve various problems.

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Frequently asked questions

What’s the difference between plagiarism and paraphrasing.

Plagiarism means using someone else’s words or ideas and passing them off as your own. Paraphrasing means putting someone else’s ideas into your own words.

So when does paraphrasing count as plagiarism?

• Paraphrasing is plagiarism if you don’t properly credit the original author.
• Paraphrasing is plagiarism if your text is too close to the original wording (even if you cite the source). If you directly copy a sentence or phrase, you should quote it instead.
• Paraphrasing  is not plagiarism if you put the author’s ideas completely into your own words and properly reference the source .

Frequently asked questions: Referencing

Peer review is a process of evaluating submissions to an academic journal. Utilising rigorous criteria, a panel of reviewers in the same subject area decide whether to accept each submission for publication.

For this reason, academic journals are often considered among the most credible sources you can use in a research project – provided that the journal itself is trustworthy and well regarded.

To paraphrase effectively, don’t just take the original sentence and swap out some of the words for synonyms. Instead, try:

• Reformulating the sentence (e.g., change active to passive , or start from a different point)
• Combining information from multiple sentences into one
• Leaving out information from the original that isn’t relevant to your point
• Using synonyms where they don’t distort the meaning

The main point is to ensure you don’t just copy the structure of the original text, but instead reformulate the idea in your own words.

In academic writing , there are three main situations where quoting is the best choice:

• To analyse the author’s language (e.g., in a literary analysis essay )
• To give evidence from primary sources
• To accurately present a precise definition or argument

Don’t overuse quotes; your own voice should be dominant. If you just want to provide information from a source, it’s usually better to paraphrase or summarise .

Articles in newspapers and magazines can be primary or secondary depending on the focus of your research.

In historical studies, old articles are used as primary sources that give direct evidence about the time period. In social and communication studies, articles are used as primary sources to analyse language and social relations (for example, by conducting content analysis or discourse analysis ).

If you are not analysing the article itself, but only using it for background information or facts about your topic, then the article is a secondary source.

A fictional movie is usually a primary source. A documentary can be either primary or secondary depending on the context.

If you are directly analysing some aspect of the movie itself – for example, the cinematography, narrative techniques, or social context – the movie is a primary source.

If you use the movie for background information or analysis about your topic – for example, to learn about a historical event or a scientific discovery – the movie is a secondary source.

Whether it’s primary or secondary, always properly cite the movie in the citation style you are using. Learn how to create an MLA movie citation or an APA movie citation .

To determine if a source is primary or secondary, ask yourself:

• Was the source created by someone directly involved in the events you’re studying (primary), or by another researcher (secondary)?
• Does the source provide original information (primary), or does it summarize information from other sources (secondary)?
• Are you directly analyzing the source itself (primary), or only using it for background information (secondary)?

Some types of sources are nearly always primary: works of art and literature, raw statistical data, official documents and records, and personal communications (e.g. letters, interviews ). If you use one of these in your research, it is probably a primary source.

Primary sources are often considered the most credible in terms of providing evidence for your argument, as they give you direct evidence of what you are researching. However, it’s up to you to ensure the information they provide is reliable and accurate.

Always make sure to properly cite your sources to avoid plagiarism .

Common examples of secondary sources include academic books, journal articles , reviews, essays , and textbooks.

Anything that summarizes, evaluates or interprets primary sources can be a secondary source. If a source gives you an overview of background information or presents another researcher’s ideas on your topic, it is probably a secondary source.

Common examples of primary sources include interview transcripts , photographs, novels, paintings, films, historical documents, and official statistics.

Anything you directly analyze or use as first-hand evidence can be a primary source, including qualitative or quantitative data that you collected yourself.

A credible source should pass the CRAAP test  and follow these guidelines:

• The information should be up to date and current.
• The author and publication should be a trusted authority on the subject you are researching.
• The sources the author cited should be easy to find, clear, and unbiased.
• For a web source, the URL and layout should signify that it is trustworthy.

The Scribbr Reference Generator is developed using the open-source Citation Style Language (CSL) project and Frank Bennett’s citeproc-js . It’s the same technology used by dozens of other popular citation tools, including Mendeley and Zotero.

You can find all the citation styles and locales used in the Scribbr Reference Generator in our publicly accessible repository on Github .

A block quote is a long quote formatted as a separate ‘block’ of text. Instead of using quotation marks , you place the quote on a new line, and indent the entire quote to mark it apart from your own words.

APA uses block quotes for quotes that are 40 words or longer.

If you’re quoting from a text that paraphrases or summarises other sources and cites them in parentheses , APA  recommends retaining the citations as part of the quote:

• Smith states that ‘the literature on this topic (Jones, 2015; Sill, 2019; Paulson, 2020) shows no clear consensus’ (Smith, 2019, p. 4).

Footnote or endnote numbers that appear within quoted text should be omitted.

If you want to cite an indirect source (one you’ve only seen quoted in another source), either locate the original source or use the phrase ‘as cited in’ in your citation.

In scientific subjects, the information itself is more important than how it was expressed, so quoting should generally be kept to a minimum. In the arts and humanities, however, well-chosen quotes are often essential to a good paper.

In social sciences, it varies. If your research is mainly quantitative , you won’t include many quotes, but if it’s more qualitative , you may need to quote from the data you collected .

As a general guideline, quotes should take up no more than 5–10% of your paper. If in doubt, check with your instructor or supervisor how much quoting is appropriate in your field.

Every time you quote a source , you must include a correctly formatted in-text citation . This looks slightly different depending on the citation style .

For example, a direct quote in APA is cited like this: ‘This is a quote’ (Streefkerk, 2020, p. 5).

Every in-text citation should also correspond to a full reference at the end of your paper.

A quote is an exact copy of someone else’s words, usually enclosed in quotation marks and credited to the original author or speaker.

To present information from other sources in academic writing , it’s best to paraphrase in most cases. This shows that you’ve understood the ideas you’re discussing and incorporates them into your text smoothly.

It’s appropriate to quote when:

• Changing the phrasing would distort the meaning of the original text
• You want to discuss the author’s language choices (e.g., in literary analysis )
• You’re presenting a precise definition
• You’re looking in depth at a specific claim

Ask our team

Want to contact us directly? No problem. We are always here for you.

• Chat with us
• Email [email protected]
• Call +44 (0)20 3917 4242
• WhatsApp +31 20 261 6040

Our support team is here to help you daily via chat, WhatsApp, email, or phone between 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. CET.

Our APA experts default to APA 7 for editing and formatting. For the Citation Editing Service you are able to choose between APA 6 and 7.

Yes, if your document is longer than 20,000 words, you will get a sample of approximately 2,000 words. This sample edit gives you a first impression of the editor’s editing style and a chance to ask questions and give feedback.

How does the sample edit work?

You will receive the sample edit within 24 hours after placing your order. You then have 24 hours to let us know if you’re happy with the sample or if there’s something you would like the editor to do differently.

Read more about how the sample edit works

Yes, you can upload your document in sections.

We try our best to ensure that the same editor checks all the different sections of your document. When you upload a new file, our system recognizes you as a returning customer, and we immediately contact the editor who helped you before.

However, we cannot guarantee that the same editor will be available. Your chances are higher if

• You send us your text as soon as possible and
• You can be flexible about the deadline.

Please note that the shorter your deadline is, the lower the chance that your previous editor is not available.

If your previous editor isn’t available, then we will inform you immediately and look for another qualified editor. Fear not! Every Scribbr editor follows the  Scribbr Improvement Model  and will deliver high-quality work.

Yes, our editors also work during the weekends and holidays.

Because we have many editors available, we can check your document 24 hours per day and 7 days per week, all year round.

If you choose a 72 hour deadline and upload your document on a Thursday evening, you’ll have your thesis back by Sunday evening!

Yes! Our editors are all native speakers, and they have lots of experience editing texts written by ESL students. They will make sure your grammar is perfect and point out any sentences that are difficult to understand. They’ll also notice your most common mistakes, and give you personal feedback to improve your writing in English.

Every Scribbr order comes with our award-winning Proofreading & Editing service , which combines two important stages of the revision process.

For a more comprehensive edit, you can add a Structure Check or Clarity Check to your order. With these building blocks, you can customize the kind of feedback you receive.

You might be familiar with a different set of editing terms. To help you understand what you can expect at Scribbr, we created this table:

View an example

When you place an order, you can specify your field of study and we’ll match you with an editor who has familiarity with this area.

However, our editors are language specialists, not academic experts in your field. Your editor’s job is not to comment on the content of your dissertation, but to improve your language and help you express your ideas as clearly and fluently as possible.

This means that your editor will understand your text well enough to give feedback on its clarity, logic and structure, but not on the accuracy or originality of its content.

Good academic writing should be understandable to a non-expert reader, and we believe that academic editing is a discipline in itself. The research, ideas and arguments are all yours – we’re here to make sure they shine!

After your document has been edited, you will receive an email with a link to download the document.

The editor has made changes to your document using ‘Track Changes’ in Word. This means that you only have to accept or ignore the changes that are made in the text one by one.

It is also possible to accept all changes at once. However, we strongly advise you not to do so for the following reasons:

• You can learn a lot by looking at the mistakes you made.
• The editors don’t only change the text – they also place comments when sentences or sometimes even entire paragraphs are unclear. You should read through these comments and take into account your editor’s tips and suggestions.
• With a final read-through, you can make sure you’re 100% happy with your text before you submit!

You choose the turnaround time when ordering. We can return your dissertation within 24 hours , 3 days or 1 week . These timescales include weekends and holidays. As soon as you’ve paid, the deadline is set, and we guarantee to meet it! We’ll notify you by text and email when your editor has completed the job.

Very large orders might not be possible to complete in 24 hours. On average, our editors can complete around 13,000 words in a day while maintaining our high quality standards. If your order is longer than this and urgent, contact us to discuss possibilities.

Always leave yourself enough time to check through the document and accept the changes before your submission deadline.

Scribbr is specialised in editing study related documents. We check:

• Graduation projects
• Dissertations
• Admissions essays
• College essays
• Application essays
• Personal statements
• Process reports
• Reflections
• Internship reports
• Academic papers
• Research proposals
• Prospectuses

Calculate the costs

The fastest turnaround time is 24 hours.

You can upload your document at any time and choose between three deadlines:

At Scribbr, we promise to make every customer 100% happy with the service we offer. Our philosophy: Your complaint is always justified – no denial, no doubts.

Our customer support team is here to find the solution that helps you the most, whether that’s a free new edit or a refund for the service.

Yes, in the order process you can indicate your preference for American, British, or Australian English .

If you don’t choose one, your editor will follow the style of English you currently use. If your editor has any questions about this, we will contact you.

7 Best Paraphrasing Tools to Use in 2024

Are you finding yourself using the same words and phrases repeatedly in your writing, even though you know there are better alternatives available? If so, the best paraphrasing tools could be the solution to help you diversify your content and enhance its quality.

Rather than investing significant time in expanding your vocabulary or refining your writing skills, these best paraphrasing tools, whether free or paid, can inject creativity into your content effortlessly.

Yet, conducting a basic Google search for ‘best paraphrasing tools’ can inundate you with millions of results. Sorting through this abundance of options can be not only time-consuming but also overwhelming. Fortunately, I’m here to assist.

After dedicating over 48 hours to exploring and evaluating more than 50 tools, I have curated a list of the top best paraphrasing tools. Let’s get started.

Table of Contents

What are the best paraphrasing tools?

The best paraphrasing tools are software programs powered by artificial intelligence that can automatically rephrase and rewrite text to create new versions while retaining the original meaning.

These tools use advanced algorithms to analyze the input text and generate alternative wording, helping users avoid plagiarism, improve readability, and enhance the uniqueness of their content.

AI paraphrasing tools are designed to assist writers, researchers, students, and anyone looking to produce high-quality, original content efficiently.

How Do You Select the Best Tools for Paraphrasing? How Do You Select the Best Tools for Paraphrasing?

• Accuracy : Look for a tool that can produce accurate and coherent paraphrases while maintaining the original meaning of the text.
• Natural Language Processing (NLP) Capabilities : Choose a tool that utilizes advanced NLP techniques to ensure the paraphrased content sounds natural and flows well.
• Plagiarism Detection : Opt for a tool that includes plagiarism detection features to help you avoid unintentional plagiarism in your paraphrased content.
• Customization Options : Consider tools that allow you to customize the level of rewriting to match your preferences and style.
• User-Friendly Interface : Select a tool with an intuitive interface that is easy to navigate and use, even for those without technical expertise.
• Speed and Efficiency : Choose a tool that can paraphrase text quickly and efficiently, saving you time and effort.
• Privacy and Security : Ensure the tool prioritizes the privacy and security of your data, especially if you are working with sensitive or confidential information.
• Cost and Value : Evaluate the pricing plans and features offered by different tools to find one that offers the best value for your budget.

Best Paraphrasing Tools

QuillBot, a widely used AI-powered paraphrasing tool, is utilized by more than 50 million users. This tool provides various functions such as grammar checking, plagiarism detection, co-writing assistance, summarization, and more. With its user-friendly interface, users can easily rewrite their text in various tones and styles.

Notably, QuillBot allows users to select a writing mode from options like standard, formal, fluent, simple, creative, and others. A convenient Word and Chrome extension enables users to access this robust tool beyond the desktop application.

Key features

• Allows to check content plagiarism with the power of AI.
• Provides AI-powered multiple paraphrasing modes.
• Offers accurate citations.
• Summarizes texts using advanced algorithms.
• Provide AI-powered writing assistance through the co-writer.
• Allows you to pick more accurate synonyms.
• Translates texts in 45 different languages.

The free version has restrictions, including a limit of 125 words for paraphrasing, a maximum of 1200 words for summarization, and access to only standard and fluency modes. The premium option, unlimited access to all features, starts at $9.95 per month, with discounts available for the annual subscription package.

Jasper AI is a comprehensive AI copywriting tool that offers a wide range of features to assist you in various writing tasks, from creating long-form articles to generating social media content.

With Jasper AI, you can benefit from functionalities such as rewriting, paraphrasing, summarization, article generation, content ideation, and seamless integration with Grammarly directly within the content editor.

For rephrasing, Jasper AI offers a variety of useful templates, including the AIDA copywriting framework, a sentence expander, a paragraph paraphraser, and a text summarizer.

Overall, Jasper AI is an exceptional product that consistently pushes the boundaries of innovation (and they have recently introduced an AI image generator as well).

• Offers AI Chrome extensions.
• Provides 50+ AI-driven copywriting templates.
• enables AI-based optimization of the integrated marketing workflow.
• Provides team collaboration opportunities.
• Allows for the creation of innovative content models.
• uses AI power to analyze voice in content.

The base plan starts at $24 per month when paid annually, but the plan you may be interested in is the Boss Mode, starting at $49 per month when paid annually.

Copysmith is an ideal and best paraphrasing tool for e-commerce businesses. You can even utilize this AI-powered tool to generate eye-catching Instagram captions with its Instagram Caption Improver.

Moreover, Copysmith helps businesses generate interactive blog posts directly from their CMS platform using the help of AI. Besides, importing files in various formats can efficiently spread the scope of your writing. You can even paraphrase existing content, like product descriptions, to repurpose it for other uses, like generating images and creating videos.

• Generates creative images with the AI Image Generator.
• It helps to build cohesive campaigns using the Campaign Builder.
• Offers SEO-optimized content-creating scopes using AI.
• Offers a robust product catalog management system.
• Provides keyword research opportunities.
• Offers powerful integrations through the Essential integrations.
• Provides a Chrome extension.

Starter Plan: $19 is the monthly starting price. Pro Plan: Starts at $49 per month. Enterprise Plans: Individualized pricing packages. Note: The Annual Pro Yearly plan can save you as much as $98.

Rytr is a multilingual AI paraphrasing tool that can help you write 10 times faster than before. It’s user-friendly and more cost-effective than other AI writing-generating tools. 

Rytr paves the way for paraphrasing and content generation with the assistance of artificial intelligence for everyone. You can swiftly summarize texts using its Bullet Point Extractor and comprehend any content quickly without having to read it all. 

Key features:

• It enables text rephrasing and rewriting through an artificial intelligence (AI) writing assistant.
• Generates compelling copies for landing pages.
• Provides creative captions and post ideas.
• Allows the identification of keywords from any text using the Keyword Extractor.
• Offers a Chrome extension.

Free Plan, Saver Plan, and Unlimited Plan, starting at $9 per month.

Writesonic is a cutting-edge writing and paraphrasing tool.

Whether you require content idea generation or content expansion, Writesonic’s advanced AI-driven capabilities are there to support you.

Integrated with Google, it provides access to the latest information while inspiring new ideas. Additionally, you can leverage elevated AI-generated images in your content, access real-time trending data from SERP, create AI chatbots, and more through its robust AI features.

• Generates complete content (1500 words or more) using AI.
• Offers over 100 AI copywriting templates.
• Provides a factual, AI-powered article writer.
• Allows for changing the tone of content.
• Enhances content SEO friendliness with AI.
• Enables the modification of content voices.
• Enhances content quality through the text expander.

Free. For small teams, starting at $19 per month. For freelancers, starting at $20 per month. For enterprises, starting at $500+ per month. Users can also receive a 20% discount on annual plans.

WordAi is an advanced AI paraphrasing tool designed to enhance writing capabilities.

WordAI personalizes content and allows for up to 1000 rewrites per article to avoid AI detection and overcome writer’s block effortlessly. Compared to other AI paraphrasing tools, it ensures top-notch humanized content quality through key features like bulk rewriting and SEO optimization.

• AI-powered rewriting offered
• Maintains human-like quality in content generation and optimization through AI
• Utilizes advanced machine learning models to restructure sentences
• Naturally splits sentences
• Prevents the creation of duplicate content
• Integrates Article Forge
• Offers bulk spinning
• The monthly cost for a yearly plan is $27. monthly plan starts at $57 per month. enterprise plan is available with custom pricing

Pre-post SEO

Pre-post SEO is a free writing tool designed for efficiently paraphrasing simple and short sentences. 

It offers a robust AI-driven essay writer for creating essays of any type. While Prepostseo doesn’t make significant changes to sentence structures, its BETA version can enhance content professionalism by rearranging phrases. Additionally, the tool optimizes texts for search engines using machine learning algorithms, ensuring worry-free content SEO.

• Provides 4 paraphrasing options: simple, advanced, fluent, and creative
• Generates essays using artificial intelligence
• Supports text upload, copy, and paste functionalities
• Includes a DA PA Checker for checking website domain authority
• Extracts text from images and documents using OCR technology
• Delivers human-readable, SEO-friendly results
• Supports 8 languages
• Free. The basic plan starts at $10 per month. The standard plan starts at $20 per month. company plan starts at $45 per month

Q: What are paraphrasing tools?

Ans: Paraphrasing tools are software applications that help rewrite text to make it unique while retaining the original meaning.

Q: How do paraphrasing tools work?

Ans: Paraphrasing tools use advanced algorithms and natural language processing techniques to rephrase sentences and paragraphs.

Q: Are paraphrasing tools accurate?

Ans: The accuracy of paraphrasing tools varies depending on the tool used. It’s essential to review and refine the output for the best results.

Q: Do paraphrasing tools support multiple languages?

Ans: Some paraphrasing tools support multiple languages, but the language options may vary depending on the tool.

Q: Are there any limitations to using paraphrasing tools?  

Ans: Paraphrasing tools may struggle with context-specific content or highly technical language, so manual intervention may be necessary in such cases.

Q: How can I choose the best paraphrasing tool for my needs?

Ans: Consider factors like accuracy, ease of use, language support, and additional features when selecting a paraphrasing tool that suits your requirements.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the Best Paraphrasing Tools offer a range of features to assist users in rewriting content effectively. These tools leverage cutting-edge technology to provide accurate and human-like paraphrased text.

Whether you are a student, writer, or content creator, utilizing these tools can enhance your productivity and creativity. Remember to review and refine the output to ensure the final text meets your standards and requirements.

Embrace the convenience and efficiency of these paraphrasing tools to elevate your writing experience in the digital age.

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Written by Nikita Vishwakarma

I'm a blogger who excels at simplifying complex ideas into easily digestible insights.

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