Understanding synonyms

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Learning to paraphrase will help you communicate the ideas of authors effectively and avoid plagiarism, the act of using another person’s ideas or words without giving credit to that person. However, even if you tell your reader that information comes from another author, you can still commit plagiarism if you change only the words but do not make the presentation of the information your own.

Some writers misinterpret the instructions to “use your own words”; they simply replace words in the source with synonyms, words that have similar meanings. Such word-by-word paraphrases frequently result in awkward sentence structures and inaccuracy.

Meaning in English often comes from phrases and sentences rather than from individual words. Also, synonyms have similar meanings, but they rarely have identical meanings. Sometimes a synonym requires a different sentence structure than the original word does.

The following examples illustrate some of the problems that can arise with word-by-word paraphrasing.

Here is a short passage from Rebecca Webber’s article “Make Your Own Luck.” The following discussion describes two unacceptable paraphrases of this passage.

ORIGINAL SOURCE

People who spot and seize opportunity are different. They are more open to life’s forking paths, so they see possibilities others miss. And if things don’t work out the way they’d hoped, they brush off disappointment and launch themselves headlong toward the next fortunate circumstance. As a result, they’re happier and more likely to achieve their goals.

—Rebecca Webber, “Make Your Own Luck,” p. 64

Following is a word-by-word paraphrase of the sentences in green.

UNACCEPTABLE PARAPHRASE: MEANING CHANGED

Persons who see and grab chances are diverse. They are further exposed to life’s dividing trails, and they view prospects others ignore.

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The first problem with this paraphrase is that the student who wrote it used the same sentence structure as in the original passage. Because she did not use her own sentence structure, this paraphrase is plagiarized. Second, the words that the student substituted are not exact synonyms, so the paraphrase has lost some of the meaning of the original passage.

As you paraphrase, it might help to keep this in mind: simply substituting synonyms into the original passage does not guarantee an accurate paraphrase.

The paraphrase of the sentence highlighted in brown in the original source demonstrates another potential problem with word-by-word paraphrases. Using synonyms often requires changing the surrounding sentence structure because in English the same word can be more than one part of speech. For example, work can be either a noun or a verb; in the following paraphrase, the student has substituted the noun effort for the verb work, but it is not an appropriate substitution.

ORIGINAL SOURCE

People who spot and seize opportunity are different. They are more open to life’s forking paths, so they see possibilities others miss. And if things don’t work out the way they’d hoped, they brush off disappointment and launch themselves headlong toward the next fortunate circumstance. As a result, they’re happier and more likely to achieve their goals.

—Rebecca Webber, “Make Your Own Luck,” p. 64

UNACCEPTABLE PARAPHRASE: AWKWARD RESULT

And if everything don’t effort out the manner they’d wanted, they rebuff disappointment and throw themselves impulsive toward the next lucky situation.