Paraphrasing, Quoting, and Summarising

Paraphrasing is the ability to copy what we heard or read by repeating it in our own words composed by our own thoughts. Being able to paraphrase well is an essential speaking and writing skill.

It’s also a reading skill. Sentences normally only have one idea. So that we can repeat what we read while keeping the original meaning at the same time, it’s important that we understand everything, including the finer details. Paraphrasing is often done for short pieces of text such as one or two sentences, which brings us on to its purpose.

There are a couple of reasons to paraphrase. Firstly, if we are writing an original piece of work, say an essay or a blog, and we want to include an extract from a copyright text such as a book or an article, then we can paraphrase it. We could perhaps quote it instead, but this often comes with some limitations, for example how much is legally allowed to be copied or maybe the extract itself is just too wordy.

This is the second reason to paraphrase. We can make the extract shorter and simpler and pass our understanding on to the reader by making it clearer too.

Therefore, paraphrasing is different to directly quoting or plainly summarising. All three are ways of rewriting something but they each have a different purpose. We don’t paraphrase a book, we summarise it, as books have many ideas. You can find one type of summary on the back of most books, which is called a blurb.

In fact, on the back of a novel you might see all three examples at play. The opening sentences of the novel could be paraphrased in an interesting way at the top. In the centre there will be a descriptive summary of the story and the author. Below that it might have some catchy quotes from reviewers.

Paraphrasing is effective at demonstrating that we understand a writer’s point of view in a sentence they wrote. Another benefit to this technique is that because paraphrasing is not just copying word for word, it helps to avoid the problem of plagiarism. Although, whether we are paraphrasing, quoting, or summarising someone else’s words, it’s always necessary to mention the source of the information.

Here are some examples of paraphrasing:

Examples

Original:

Norwegian law says that anything found that is older than 1537 is state property.

Paraphrased:

Objects found in Norway from before 1537 should be returned to the government.

Original:

Fatou sometimes asks herself, “I can’t dance, I can’t rap ... What am I doing?”

Paraphrased:

Every so often, Fatou finds herself questioning her singing and dancing abilities.

Original:

In a statement given by the European Council, they said that “batteries contain many valuable resources and we must be able to reuse those critical raw materials”.

Paraphrased:

It’s important that the precious natural materials that go into making batteries are reusable, the European Council have officially stated.

When we need to copy some text without quoting it, we can’t get away with just changing the word order and call it paraphrasing! Here is how to paraphrase in three easy steps.

Do you understand the idea(s) of the sentence(s)? Do you know the meaning of all the words?

When we want to use what someone else wrote in our own work, it’s probably because we like it. It’s certain that we understand it if that is the case. If, however, we want to paraphrase something because we disagree with it, it’s worth checking that we understand the full meaning. Either way, asking yourself the two questions above is a great first step.

The next step is to identify the words that carry the meaning of the sentence. There are a few things to be aware of here:

• The facts cannot be changed, such as who or what the sentence is about. Things such as proper nouns or facts and figures will most likely stay the same.
• The rest of the important words can be changed with synonyms to suit our taste, such as government for state. Also, looking at names or data as words, it is possible to use synonyms. Compare for example, a percentage figure of 51% could be written as “just over half”.
• The sentence structure might also change too. Using verbs instead of nominalisations could be useful when rewriting something, especially to make it clearer. For example, the opening phrase “In a statement given by...” compared to the closing phrase “...have officially stated”.

The last thing to do is to re-read your new sentence to see if it carries the same meaning as the original. Finally, the original needs to be referrenced in an appropriate way.

Choose between A or B as the best paraphrased answer.

Quoting is linked to paragraph structure, for example as a way to illustrate a point, which is a language skill for another time. So this section will mostly cover the technical know-hows of quoting instead of diving into the reasons why, and offer some higher-level synonyms for the word said.

Quotes are often used as evidence, compared to paraphrasing something in your own terms. In fact, quoting is sometimes known as “direct quoting” whereas paraphrasing is sometimes known as “indirect quoting”. Direct quotes require quotation marks but paraphrasing doesn’t need quotation marks. Typical examples of direct quoting would be a famous movie line or the words of an expert. Or both at the same time, as in this passage from Matthew Bortolin’s 2005 book The Dharma of Star Wars:

Yoda’s words about Luke in The Empire Strikes Back can easily be applied to us: “Never his mind on where he was. What he was doing.” Likewise, our minds are rarely in touch with where we are and with what we are doing.

It is also possible to make a quote fit within the rhythm of your own sentence:

Scientist Rayyanah Barnawi was thrilled to say “hello from outer space” from on board the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

Or even to employ paraphrasing and a quotation together:

The RAC said they want the trialled cameras in the worst areas affected, and “the sooner effective camera enforcement can be put in place the better”.

Here are some alternative verbs to use instead of relying on say.

A short final note on usage. British and American English rules of quotation can vary slightly. American English uses double quote marks, “like this” and British English uses single quote marks, ‘like this’. However, British media tends to use the double style too, as do the lessons on Every Bit English. And according to British English rules, your sentence punctuation goes outside the quote marks. Look out for an in-depth language skills page on punctuation here in the future!

In the first section What is paraphrasing? above, it was mentioned that paraphrasing, quoting, and summarising have different purposes, and it had book blurbs as an example. Well, now we’re on the summarising section, we will see that summarising can have various purposes and styles of its own.

Instead of looking at how to write an academic summary, say a book summary for an essay, we’ll look at summaries in the form of loglines.

A logline is a short, one or two sentence summary of a movie (or television show or book) written with the aim to catch the reader’s interest. It is short but packed with detail such as the main theme of the story, what the characters are like, and it will be written in an exciting style.

You’ll see loglines on Netflix for example, typically directly underneath the movie’s image and title. This is because loglines play an important role in advertising a movie and they’re written before a movie ever even starts production.

A writer needs a useful way to summarise their script and so they write a logline. This will be a carefully written summary that uniquely captures exactly what their story is about. If it is written successfully, then producers and studios who read it (before the script) are more likely to be interested in making it into a movie.

If we turn writing a logline into an English lesson activity, then it presents a fascinating way to practice the reading and rewriting skills necessary for good summarising and paraphrasing. Remembering the first step of paraphrasing above, to write any paraphrase requires understanding the original text. The same applies to summaries and their original texts. For both techniques, some level of reading analysis is required.

In the next section a movie logline is analysed and in the final section the materials and guidance are offered to try it yourself.

Earth’s mightiest heroes must come together and learn to fight as a team if they are going to stop the mischievous Loki and his alien army from enslaving humanity.

Source (external link): IMDb.com

Sounds like an exciting movie judging by this summary! We can tell from just these few words that it’s a fantasy action movie. It pictures a massive-scale battle between good and bad, and possibly in between the heroes too. Let’s take a closer look at what the logline manages to detail.

The setting:

Earth’s

The heroes:

mightiest heroes

Their present situation:

must come together and learn to fight as a team

Their goal:

if they are going to stop

The problem:

the mischievous Loki and his alien army from enslaving humanity.

As every movie has a different story, loglines always tell a different story. As summaries, loglines will often contain these narrative elements:

1. The setting. This is usually a place or a period in time.
2. The hero or heroine. It could be a group as in the above example. The literary term for the main character is protagonist.
3. The main character’s present situation. Where they start their story. In a logline, this is often a time of difficulty or change in their life.
4. The goal. What the main character has to do for a happy ending to the story.
5. The problem. In literary terms, the villain, or hero’s enemy, is called the antagonist. This could be anything from a fantasy figure with evil plans, to a long journey to be overcome.

Writing a logline is a good exercise for practising summarising and paraphrasing. There are two activities presented below. In the first, you can practice paraphrasing by rewriting a logline, and in the second, you can practice summarising by writing your own logline.

Before that, here are some tips for writing a better logline:

• The order of events as shown in the above example is good for loglines
• Try not to use the main character’s name. Describe them instead.
• For practice purposes, keep it only one sentence long.
• Don’t say how the story finishes! (No spoilers.)
• Don’t finish with a question mark.

It’s worth noting here that with paraphrasing as a rewriting skill more generally, the original text would be rearranged a lot more. See the exercises section for paraphrasing examples.

Once you’ve completed the activities and written some loglines, share them and see if anyone can guess what movies they are!

Look up any logline and write it down. Then analyse it for the five narrative elements and write each element in the table. Use the keywords in the logline to help identify what element it is. Then think of some synonyms for the keywords. Use your new keywords to paraphrase the original by writing your own version of the logline.

Example

Think of a movie you know well. Fill in the table with ideas for keywords that describe and summarise the movie. Then compose your own logline for it. Afterwards, look up the original and see how close you were!