Examples of Unacceptable Paraphrases

If there are more than two words in a row that are identical to the text, you are copying, not summarizing. I would much rather see grammatically incorrect insights into the paper than a cut-and-paste “summary.” Each entry in the left-hand side in this table was an (unquoted) statement in a student summary with the exact wording given in the original paper. Without the quotes, each of these examples is plagiarism. You can simply quote this text if you think that the paper says it best. Alternatively, you can paraphrase or partially quote, as shown on the right-hand side of the table. A good approach is to read the paper and then sit down to write the summary without looking at the paper. Even then, you should ask yourself, and revisit the paper, to be sure that you’re not simply echoing what the paper said, but summarizing in your own words.