Before getting to the point, you should know that paraphrasing and summarize are relevant terms to each other whereas they usually create confusion for the users.
Taking an example of a presentation, your teacher asked you to prepare a presentation. You will ask your team members to collect data and participate. All the members will share quantitative data but your teacher has granted you 10 minutes to present your content.
Now you will paraphrase and summarize the content of all the members and will make your own worded content to represent. In this article, we will be discussing when and how to use paraphrasing and summarizing in your content.
Paraphrasing
It is the writing of someone’s original idea into your own words. It using other’s content slightly. The paraphrasing needs the citation to the original content’s source. However, the paraphrased content is usually shorter than the original words. Below is an example of an original versus paraphrased sentence.
Original: Her life spanned years of splendid trade for girls as they gained greater rights than ever before.
Paraphrased: She lived via the exciting era of women’s liberation.
Summarizing
As we know that writing someone content in your own words is considered paraphrasing. However, adding the main idea of content into your content is considered as summarizing. Summarizing includes the overview of the content and it only contains the main idea of the entire article. Below is the example of content and summarizing it.
Why use Paraphrasing and Summarizing?
There are different situations where you need some paraphrasing or summarizing for your content. Both paraphrasing and summarizing can be used in your content and it’s allowed but you need to refer/mention the source.
Below are the reasons for using paraphrasing in your content:
- There are some cases, where you need to use some other writer’s content. You can’t use the same wording because it will generate plagiarism in your content.
- It may be used when you don’t want to use quotes in your content but you want to give the theme of the quotes.
- When the idea of another writer has more relevance but the writing style is not accurate or competence.
- When you want to simply or justify the work of another writer.
Similarly, the reasons for using summarizing is below:
- When your content just needs the main idea of someone’s content. Like writing a moral of a story.
- Summarizing is required when you want to give an overview of an article instead of writing a quantifiable word.
- When adding content, you sometimes need to add simple wording instead of writing a complex expression.
- When you only want to use the main highlights of the content instead of adding the supporting sentences.
How to paraphrase content?
Whether you are writing a research paper or blog posts, you need to know the way of using paraphrasing content. If you are unable to know the writing of paraphrasing then it might help search engines to detect the guilty in your content.
There are two ways of paraphrasing content including manual and paraphrasing through online tools.
However, we have discussed some points to focus while paraphrasing:
- Read the page that you want to paraphrase and highlight the main wordings or theme of the content.
- Use dictionaries, thesauruses, and other supporting tools to replace the main words of the original words. You need to focus on maintaining the main idea of the content, especially when writing a research paper or scientific terms.
- Now clear all the vocabulary and grammar of the content, replace the passive words with the action words. Break the longer sentences into shorter whereas making your sentences easier to understand.
- You can use online tools for paraphrasing your sentences. These online tools are faster and more efficient than manual tools. These are also available for free like Paraphrasing tool by Prepostseo.
- Don’t forget to add the citation to the original writer and the source whether you are doing manual paraphrasing or through any tool. Avoiding citations may penalize your content.
How to summarize an article?
Summarizing is quite a difficult task in some situations. This is because you have to make your wording short by giving an overview of the article. You need to maintain the sense of the article but in shorter words. However, some of more tips of summarizing are the following:
- Read the original content faster to get the theme of the whole article. Focus on understanding the title, sub-titles, highlights as well as other main section of the article.
- Clear your understanding through reading by repetitions. However, in every repetition verify your previous understanding.
- Highlight the main wording as well as the heading of the content. However, don’t miss any main keyword of the content.
- After getting the main keywords, start writing the summary. The best way of writing is to write keyword by keyword. Your summary should include any extra sentences and it must be shorter as much as it can.
- There are some online tools for summarizing your content. These tools are quicker but not much efficient. However, you can use the tool and recheck it to make your writing accurate.
- Add citation to your summary using the name of the writer and source.
The picture shows how resoomer, summarize a long text into 49% reduced text, from 103 words to 50 words.
Difference between Paraphrase and Summary
The basic difference is that paraphrase makes the wordings change while summarizing includes only the key points. The paraphrasing is written in explanation as it uses the same sentences but different wording. In the case of summarizing, you just have to write the content regarding the main keyword and overview it more shortly.
If the paraphrasing of an article is poor then search engines like Google may be to detect the plagiarism in your content. In this way, you might get ruined because of plagiarism. However, writing a summary doesn’t get detected through the search engines because of less elaboration.
Manual paraphrasing or summarizing usually takes a lot of time. It needs repetition as well as there are chances of less efficiency. There might some mistakes or missing in the content in the manual. However, if we use online tools then these mistakes are automatically solved. The online tools are quicker and much efficient than manual.
