Plagiarism and Academic Integrity Tutorial

Putting a piece of text or an idea into ‘your own words’ is called paraphrasing. The purpose of paraphrasing is often to summarize or simplify the author’s ideas, making them easier to understand and more approachable. You might also use paraphrasing to emphasize a particular idea or train of thought from the original author’s text. Paraphrasing is acceptable to do but you still need to acknowledge the original author’s ideas by referencing them even if it is has been substantially re-expressed.

It is important to be cautious rewriting a piece of information in your own words, or paraphrasing. Close paraphrasing, where trivial changes are made such as substituting similar words or changing the sentence order, is essentially the same as copying the author’s words directly. This is not enough to count as an original expression of the idea and is still considered a form of exact copy plagiarism.