Sad to say, plagiarism is not just caused by mindless copy-paste. Almost any piece of writing should have scientific evidence, statistics or numbers. Writing an essay or a blog post, you do a research. Then you have to express the original trustworthy concept in your own words. But how different these words must be from the original?
Paraphrasing is expressing the original author’s idea in a new way. When you try to combine pieces of the original author’s language with yours, this results in plagiarizing, or the so-called patchwork paraphrase.
In this infographic, we suggest advice on working with the source text - making lists and looking away from the source text when writing. But what if you have to rewrite complicated and specific piece?
This infographic gives you detailed instructions on how your writing must differ from the source. It highlights the key aspects: changing the paragraph and sentence structure, using different grammatical constructions and changing the vocabulary.
You can also find tips on how to make proper quotes and give reference to the author. Putting words into the quotation marks is not always appropriate. Sometimes it makes your piece incoherent and confuses the reader.
The examples illustrate the common mistakes, plagiarism cases and effective paraphrase variations.
Print infographic and keep it close at hand the next time you work with the source! It will help you to omit the patchwork paraphrase and check if everything is correct. You can also use plagiarism detection tool to make sure that you’ve succeeded in paraphrasing.
Practice in paraphrasing. Be patient. Good luck!
Infographic by: plagiarismcheck.org
