Research
work is pretty hard by itself. Finding relevant resources, interpreting the
sourced material, selecting the right information to include in your work,
proper citations, and finally, paraphrasing in a way that is pleasing to read
and doesn’t involve plagiarism: it’s a long and wearisome process.
Understanding the nuances of paraphrasing can help you out with at least one
aspect of your research work. Even if you have hired professionals for the job
of paraphrasing, knowing the following dos and don’ts will really come in handy
for you.
Do Know The Reason For Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing
is not simply rewriting the ideas from work done by someone else. Your aim is
to showcase that you have understood the material you have read by putting up
ideas from that source in your style while adding citations as needed. A professional paraphrasing
service will paraphrase ideas
from the source to present the information to the reader in a succinct and
clear manner.
To Understand The Text Being
Paraphrased
It
is important to understand the text clearly at the time of paraphrasing, or the
paraphrased text would resemble the original one too closely. The point is to
interpret the information for the reader in a way that you are explaining
something to a teacher or a colleague. Paraphrasing is not blindly copying but
rather a way to showcase your understanding of the text.
Don’t Make Thesaurus Your Key To
Paraphrasing
Using
the thesaurus to swap a couple of words here and there is not paraphrasing. It
also affects the quality of your work. You can use it once or twice if you are
not sure about the word you should use. Even then, you should resort to a
dictionary to understand the meaning of the words. You might just use a word in
a completely wrong context, which will make the reader question your grasp over
the subject.
Don’t Go On Copying Without
Quotation Marks
You
can choose to keep a few lines from the original work, but you should always
put them under quotation marks. As any professional paraphrasing service will
tell you, if you copy at least three words or more from an original text and
don’t put quotation marks, it is considered plagiarized, even if you include
in-text citations. You can avoid all these by giving quotation marks and
citations both with the text that you have copied.
Even
if you give it to a professional service for paraphrasing, you will have to
check their work to make sure that it is all okay. Keeping these points in mind
will help you understand that. You can edit the document further accordingly.