Paraphrase vs. Summary: What’s the difference?
A paraphrase is a restatement of a source’s words and ideas in your own words. You must faithfully represent the information in the source, including main ideas and details. Think of paraphrasing like “translating” the information from a source into your own “lingo.”
A summary is a much shorter version of the original source. Again, a summary is written in your own words. It’s a “distilled” version that includes only the main information. An abstract is a kind of summary.
How do I choose?
Paraphrasing is useful when the original passage is difficult to understand, or when a long quote is awkward.
Summarizing is useful when you need to include the main ideas from a source, or discuss themes across a group of sources, but the source itself is too long or complex and you don’t need to include all the details.
Keep in mind…
- Check the assignment description or instructions. Some faculty have preferences.
- Check the relevant style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.) for guidance on choosing one or the other.
How to paraphrase
Guidelines
- Use your own words, phrasing, and sentence structure to restate the source’s message. If a synonym sounds awkward or changes the meaning, quote the original wording instead, but use direct quotations sparingly. You may keep technical terms from the original.
- Rephrase what the source says without adding new ideas, examples, or opinions.
- Keep the source’s order of ideas and emphasis, but express both in your own words.
- Reread your paraphrase to make sure it accurately represents the source’s meaning.
- Expect your paraphrase to be about as long as the original, and sometimes longer.
- Avoid plagiarism by documenting every paraphrase, just as you would document a quotation or summary.
- Paraphrase only passages that contain ideas you need to reproduce in detail. Because paraphrasing requires a close version of the source, avoid paraphrasing large sections of text; even one page is too much.
Example
Source: Weiss, R. “Safety Gets Short Shrift on Long Night Shift.” Science News 21 Jan. 1989:37.
Original Material
“In a pilot study of 28 medical interns, Czeisler says he was surprised to find that during the past year more than one-quarter of them had fallen asleep while talking on the telephone. Thirty-four percent reported at least one actual or near-miss automobile accident during the year because of sleepiness more than triple that percentage they reported in the year before their internship” (Weiss 37).
Acceptable Paraphrase
In a study by Czeisler of 28 medical interns observed during late-night shifts over a one-year period, over 25 percent admitted to falling asleep while talking on the phone, and 34 percent had at least one accident or near accident during that period due to fatigue (Weiss 37).
How to summarize
Guidelines
- Identify the main points and condense them without losing the meaning.
- When summarizing information from multiple sources, focus on what information they share or have in common.
- Use your own words to condense the message.
- Keep your summary short.
- Avoid plagiarism. Document carefully. You are required to give the source of any summary, just as you do for quotations and paraphrases.
- Do not be tempted to interpret something the author says or to make a judgment about the values of the argument. Your own opinions do not belong in a summary.
Example
Source: Thorne-Miller, Boyce, and John G. Catena. The Living Ocean: Understanding and Protecting Marine Biodiversity. Washington: Island, 1991. 3-4.
Original Material
“As human beings have populated the lands of the earth, we have pushed out other
forms of life. It seemed to some that our impact must stop at the ocean’s edge, but that has not proved to be so. By overharvesting the living bounty of the sea and by flushing the wastes and by-products of our societies from the land into the ocean, we have managed to impoverish, if not destroy, living ecosystems there as well” (Thorne-Miller 3-4).
Acceptable Summary
People have destroyed numerous forms of life on land and are now doing the same with the oceans. Overfishing and dumping waste products into the waters have brought about the destruction of various forms of ocean life.