The words paraphrasing, rewording, and rephrasing tend to be used interchangeably in everyday speech, but they have differences.

Paraphrasing, often used in academia, is the act of taking someone else’s idea or writing and putting it into your own words. Often this involves summarizing sentences, but you can also paraphrase paragraphs, essays, articles, or larger works. No matter what you’re paraphrasing, you’ll need to cite the original source wherever you use a paraphrase. This will help you avoid plagiarism.

Rewording involves replacing some of the words in a sentence or piece of writing with synonyms.

Rephrasing implies restructuring or reordering a piece of writing.

You’ll often use rewording and rephrasing when creating a paraphrase.

Here's an example of a paraphrase. It rewords and rephrases the original text, and it also includes an in-text citation of the original source.

Original text:

It’s been demonstrated that increasing CO2 levels in a greenhouse environment changes pea plants’ growth patterns.

Paraphrase:

When carbon dioxide levels are increased in greenhouse conditions, it’s been shown that pea plants grow differently (Bawa, 2022).

The easiest, quickest way to create a paraphrase is to use a free paraphrase generator like the one at the top of this page. To use this paraphrasing tool, paste in your source text, then click the “Paraphrase it” button. 

If you’d like to write a paraphrase from scratch, first read the original text closely. Then, convey the ideas expressed in the original text using your own words. To do this, you can use synonyms, change parts of speech, rearrange words, remove information, or add a personal take. You’ll likely want to use several of these tactics in your paraphrase to ensure you avoid plagiarism.

Lastly, you’ll always want to include an in-text citation for the original source when you’re using a paraphrase within the body of your written work and a full citation on your bibliography page that corresponds with it.

Paraphrasing involves putting someone else’s writing or ideas into your own words. Plagiarism is when you use someone else’s ideas in your work without crediting them via a citation. To avoid unintentional plagiarism, you may want to use Grammarly’s plagiarism checker, which scans your writing against academic databases and 90 billion online texts and then flags any instances of unoriginal wording.

Using a paraphrasing tool isn’t cheating. It’s a helpful way to speed up your work or get inspiration for writing your own paraphrases. That said, be sure to credit to your original source whenever you use a paraphrase—even one generated by a free paraphrasing tool—in your work. Otherwise, you risk plagiarising. We provide guidance on how to cite a paraphrase below.

Citations are essential to avoiding plagiarism. Anytime you use an idea that’s not your own, whether you’re quoting or paraphrasing, you need to credit the original source using a citation style, such as APA, MLA, or Chicago. The type of citation you should use depends on your course of study and your professor’s requirements.

The easiest way to cite is using a free citation tool, like Grammarly’s MLA Citation Generator, APA Citation Generator, or Chicago Citation Generator. Simply enter the information for the original source of the paraphrase into the tool. It will then instantly create the in-text citations you need to place after a quote or paraphrase in your work; it will also generate the full citations you need to include in your bibliography, works cited, or references page (for MLA, APA, and Chicago-style citations, respectively).