Paraphrase and Summary

Paraphrase You recast a passage of text into your own words. A paraphrase should be approximately the same length as the original text. The purpose of a paraphrase is to clarify the meaning of the original for your audience.

When to Paraphrase The original text should be complex enough— either in terms of meaning or language—that it is necessary or useful to paraphrase. Dense, archaic, confusing, or abstract text can be paraphrased, so your audience has a clearer understanding of the point the author is making.

Summary Like paraphrase, a summary recasts text into your own words. Unlike paraphrase, a summary should be appreciably shorter than the original. You can summarize large texts—like books or articles. You can summarize smaller pieces of text—like sections of text, graphs, and lists.

What is the difference? Length. When you summarize, you are actually also paraphrasing because you are taking the original text and putting it into your own words. Therefore, think of paraphrasing as putting the text into your own language, but summary both puts the text into your own language AND makes the original shorter.

Using Summary or Paraphrase You use summary and paraphrase like you do any supporting material—to support and validate your ideas. You do not use summary and paraphrase to present your ideas for you—it is always used for support. You need to show where summary and paraphrase both begin and end in your text, so there is no confusion about what is yours and what you are borrowing.

Indicate where the paraphrase or summary begins and ends. Show where these elements begin by using the same kind of introductory phrasing as you do direct quotation. This means you use signal or introductory phrases or text and indicate parenthetically where we can find the original text. If you use direct quotation within the paraphrase or summary, you indicate that you’ve done so with quotation marks.

For example I am paraphrasing and summarizing a long section of text on pages in Gatto. Gatto discusses Menken’s goals for education as a “threefold” approach to citizenship which affected Americans both at home and in their public lives (34-35). Here I know where the paraphrased section begins (Gatto)and where it ends (page numbers in parentheses).

If I don’t begin with the author’s name I am still paraphrasing and summarizing a long section of text on pages in Gatto. The author discusses Menken’s goals for education as a “threefold” approach to citizenship which affected Americans both at home and in their public lives (Gatto 34-35). Here I know where the paraphrased section begins (indicative phrase) and where it ends (author’s name and page numbers in parentheses).