Paraphrase, Patchwriting, and Plagiarism

We have indicated that only rarely will you have reason to introduce a paraphrase into your essays. But in your preliminary work, when taking notes, you might sometimes do one or more of the following: copy word for word, paraphrase (usually to establish an author’s idea clearly in your mind), summarize, and / or produce a medley of borrowed words and original words. The latter strategy is known as patchwriting, and it can be dangerous: If you submit such a medley in your final essay, you risk the charge of plagiarism even if you have rearranged the phrases and clauses, and even if you have cited your source.

Here’s an example. First, we give the source: a paragraph from Jena McGregor’s essay on whether women serving in the armed forces should be allowed to participate directly in combat. (The entire essay is printed in Jena McGregor, Military Women in Combat: Why Making It Official Matters.)

Last week, female soldiers began formally moving into jobs in previously all-male battalions, a program that will later go Army-wide. The move is a result of rule changes following a February report that opened some 14,000 new positions to women in critical jobs much closer to the front lines. However, some 250,000 combat jobs still remain officially closed to them.

Here is a student’s patchwriting version:

Women in the army recently began to formally move into jobs in battalions that previously were all-male. This program later will go throughout the Army. According to author Jena McGregor, the move comes from changes in the rules following a February report that opened about 14,000 new jobs to women in critical jobs that are much closer to the front lines. About 250,000 jobs, however — as McGregor points out — continue to be officially closed to women.

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As you can see, the student writer has followed the source almost phrase by phrase — certainly, sentence by sentence — making small verbal changes, such as substituting Women in the army recently for McGregor’s Last week, female soldiers and substituting the move comes from changes in the rules for McGregor’s The move is a result of rule changes….

What the student should have done is either (1) quote the passage exactly, setting it off to indicate that it’s a quotation and indicating the source, or (2) summarize it briefly and credit the source — maybe in a sentence such as this:

Jena McGregor points out that although a recent change in army rules has resulted in new jobs being opened for women in the military, some 250,000 jobs “continue to be officially closed.”

As opposed to the above example of a sentence that frankly summarizes a source, patchwriting is not the student’s writing but, rather, the source material thinly disguised. In a given paragraph of patchwriting, usually some of the words are copied from the source, and all or most of the rest consists of synonyms substituted for the source’s words, with minor rearrangement of phrases and clauses. That is, the sequence of ideas and their arrangement, as well as most of the language, are entirely or almost entirely derived from the source, even if some of the words are different.

The fact that you may cite a source is not enough to protect you from the charge of plagiarism. Citing a source tells the reader that some fact or idea — or some groups of words enclosed within quotation marks or set off by indentation — comes from the named source; it does not tell the reader that almost everything in the paragraph is, in effect, someone else’s writing with a few words changed, a few words added, and a few phrases moved.

The best way to avoid introducing patchwriting into your final essay is to make certain that when taking notes you indicate, in the notes themselves, what sorts of notes they are. For example:

Make certain that your notes indicate the degree of indebtedness to your source, and again, do not think that if you name a source in a paraphrase you’re not plagiarizing. The reader assumes that the name indicates the source of a fact or an idea — not that the paragraph is a rewriting of the original with an occasional phrase of your own inserted here and there.

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If you have taken notes properly, with indications of the sort we’ve mentioned, when writing your paper you can say things like the following:

A CHECKLIST FOR A PARAPHRASE

  • Do I have a good reason for offering a paraphrase rather than a summary?

  • Is the paraphrase entirely in my own words — a word-by-word “translation” — rather than a patchwork of the source’s words and my own, with some of my own rearrangement of phrases and clauses?

  • Do I not only cite the source but also explicitly say that the entire passage is a paraphrase?

X’s first reason is simple. He says, “…” (here you quote X’s words, putting them within quotation marks).

X’s point can be summarized thus … (here you cite the page).

X, writing for lawyers, uses some technical language, but we can paraphrase her conclusion in this way: … (here you give the citation).

In short:

For additional information about plagiarism, see A Note on Plagiarizing, Paraphrasing, and Using Common Knowledge.

STRATEGIES FOR SUMMARIZING

As with paraphrases, summaries can be useful for helping you to establish your understanding of an essay or article. Summarizing each paragraph or each group of closely related paragraphs will enable you to follow the threads of the argument and will ultimately provide a useful map of the essay. Then, when rereading the essay, you may want to underline passages that you now realize are the author’s key ideas — for instance, definitions, generalizations, summaries. You may also want to jot notes in the margins, questioning the logic, expressing your uncertainty, or calling attention to other writers who see the matter differently.

Summaries are also useful for your readers, for the reasons noted on page 47. How long should your summaries be? They can be as short as a single sentence or as long as an entire paragraph. Here’s a one-sentence summary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous essay “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” King wrote this essay after his arrest for marching against racial segregation and injustice in Birmingham, Alabama.

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In his letter, King argues that the time is ripe for nonviolent protest throughout the segregated South, dismissing claims by local clergymen who opposed him, and arguing that unjust laws need to be challenged by black people who have been patient and silent for too long.

King’s essay, however, is quite long. Obviously, our one-sentence summary cannot convey substantial portions of King’s eloquent arguments, sacrificing almost all the nuance of his rationale, but it serves as an efficient summation and allows the writer to move on to his own analysis promptly.

A longer summary might try to capture more nuance, especially if, for the purposes of your essay, you need to capture more. How much you summarize depends largely on the purpose of your summary (see again our list of reasons to summarize). Here is a longer summary of King’s letter:

A RULE FOR WRITERS Your essay is likely to include brief summaries of points of view with which you agree or disagree, but it will rarely include a paraphrase unless the original is obscure and you feel compelled to present a passage at length in words that are clearer than those of the original. If you do paraphrase, explicitly identify the material as a paraphrase. Never submit patchwriting.

In his letter, King argues that the time is ripe for nonviolent protest in the segregated South despite the criticism he and his fellow civil rights activists received from various authorities, especially the eight local clergymen who wrote a public statement against him. King addresses their criticism point by point, first claiming his essential right to be in Birmingham with his famous statement, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” and then saying that those who see the timing of his group’s nonviolent direct action as inconvenient must recognize at least two things: one, that his “legitimate and unavoidable impatience” resulted from undelivered promises by authorities in the past; and two, that African Americans had long been told over and over again to wait for change with no change forthcoming. “This ‘wait’ has almost always meant ‘never,’” King writes. For those who criticized his leadership, which encouraged people to break laws prohibiting their march, King says that breaking unjust laws may actually be construed as a just act. For those who called him an extremist, he revels in the definition (“was not Jesus an extremist in love?” he asks) and reminds them of the more extremist groups who call for violence in the face of blatant discrimination and brutality (and who will surely rise, King suggests, if no redress is forthcoming for the peaceful southern protestors he leads). Finally, King rails against “silence,” saying that to hold one’s tongue in the face of segregation is tantamount to supporting it — a blow to “white moderates” who believe in change but do nothing to help bring it about.

This summary, obviously much longer than the first, raises numerous points from King’s argument and preserves through quotation some of King’s original tone and substance. It sacrifices much, of course, but seeks to provide a thorough account of a long and complex document containing many primary and secondary claims.

If your instructor asks for a summary of an essay, most often he or she won’t want you to include your own thoughts about the content. Of course, you’ll be using your own words, but try to “put yourself in the original author’s shoes” and provide a summary that reflects the approach taken by the source. It should not contain ideas that the original piece doesn’t express. If you use exact words and phrases drawn from the source, enclose them in quotation marks.

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Summaries may be written for exercises in reading comprehension, but the point of summarizing when writing an essay is to assist your own argument. A faithful summary — one without your own ideas interjected — can be effective when using a source as an example or showing another writer’s concordance with your argument. Consider the following paragraph written by a student who was arguing that if a person today purchases goods manufactured in sweatshops or under other inadequate labor conditions, then he or she is just as responsible for the abuses of labor as the companies who operate them. Notice how the student provides a summary (underlined) along the way and how it assists her argument.

Americans today are so disconnected from the source and origins of the products they buy that it is entirely possible for them one day to march against global warming and the next to collect a dividend in their 401k from companies that are the worst offenders. It is possible to weep over a news report on child labor in China and then post an emotional plea for justice on Facebook using a mobile device made by Chinese child laborers. In 1849, Henry David Thoreau wrote in “Resistance to Civil Government” how ironic it was to see his fellow citizens in Boston opposed to slavery in the South, yet who read the daily news and commodity prices and “fall asleep over them both,” not recognizing their own investments in, or patronage of, the very thing that offends their consciences. To Thoreau, such “gross inconsistency” makes even well-intentioned people “agents of injustice.” Similarly, today we do not see the connections between our consumer habits and the various kinds of oppression that underlie our purchases — forms of oppression we would never support directly and outright.

The embedded short summary addresses only one point of Thoreau’s original essay, but it shows how summaries may serve in an integrative way — as analogy, example, or illustration — to support an argument even without adding the writer’s own commentary or analysis.

CRITICAL SUMMARY

When writing a longer summary that you intend to integrate into your argument, you may interject your own ideas; the appropriate term for this is critical summary. It signifies that you’re offering more than a thorough and accurate account of an original source, because you’re adding your evaluation of it as well. Think of this as weaving together your neutral summary with your own argument so that the summary meshes seamlessly with your overall writing goal. Along the way, during the summary, you may appraise the original author’s ideas, commenting on them as you go — even while being faithful to the original.

How can you faithfully account for an author’s argument while commenting on its merits or shortcomings? One way is to offer examples from the original. In addition, you might assess the quality of those examples or present others that the author didn’t consider. Remember, being critical doesn’t necessarily mean refuting the author. Your summary can refute, support, or be more balanced, simply recognizing where the original author succeeds and fails.

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A STRATEGY FOR WRITING A CRITICAL SUMMARY Follow these five steps when writing a critical summary:

  1. Introduce the summary. You don’t have to provide all these elements, but consider offering the author’s name and expertise, the title of the source, the place of publication, the year of publication, or any other relevant information. You may also start to explain the author’s main point that you are summarizing:

    Pioneering feminist Betty Friedan, in her landmark book The Feminine Mystique (1963), argued that …

    In an essay on the state of higher education today, University of Illinois English professor Cary Nelson complains about …

  2. Explain the major point the source makes. Here you have a chance to tell your readers what the original author is saying, so be faithful to the original but also highlight the point you’re summarizing:

    Pioneering feminist Betty Friedan, in her landmark book The Feminine Mystique (1963), argued that women of the early 1960s were falling victim to a media-created image of ideal femininity that pressured them to prioritize homemaking, beauty, and maternity above almost all other concerns.

    Here you can control the readers’ understanding through simple adjectives such as pioneering and landmark. (Compare how “stalwart feminist Betty Friedan, in her provocative book” might dispose the reader to interpret your material differently.)

    In a blunt critique of the state of higher education today, University of Illinois professor Cary Nelson complains that universities are underpaying and overworking part-time, adjunct teachers.

  3. Exemplify by offering one or more representative examples or evidence on which the original author draws. Feel free to quote if needed, though it is not required in a summary.

    Friedan examines post–World War II trends that included the lowering of the marriage age, the rise of the mass media, and what she calls “the problem that has no name” — that of feminine un-fulfillment, or what we might today call “depression.”

  4. Problematize by placing your assessment, analysis, or question into the summary.

    While the word depression never comes up in Friedan’s work, one could assume that terms like malaise, suffering, and housewives’ fatigue signal an emerging understanding of the relationship between stereotypical media representations of social identity and mental health.

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    If you’re working toward a balanced critique or rebuttal, here is a good place to insert your ideas or those of someone with a slightly different view.

    Nelson is right to say that schools should model themselves on the ideals being taught in classrooms, but having a flexible workforce is perfectly logical for a large organization (something probably also taught in many business classes).

  5. Extend by tying the summary to your argument, helping transition out of the critical summary and back into your own analysis.

Friedan’s work should raise questions about how women are portrayed in the media today, and about what mental health consequences are attributable to the ubiquitous and consistent messages given to women about their bodies, occupations, and social roles.

The biggest problem with using too many contingent faculty is with preserving the quality of undergraduate education and the basic principles of academic freedom. Paying contingent faculty more money while increasing the number of tenure-track positions is not just a question of principles but a hallmark of the investment a university makes in its students.

It is possible to use this method — Introduce, Explain, Exemplify, Problematize, and Extend — in many ways, but essentially it is a way of providing a critical summary, any element of which can be enhanced or built upon as needed.

A RULE FOR WRITERS Remember that when writing a summary you are putting yourself into the author’s shoes.

Having insisted earlier that you should read the essays in this book slowly because the writers build one reason on another, we will now seem to contradict ourselves by presenting an essay that you can almost skim. Susan Jacoby’s piece originally appeared in the New York Times, a thoroughly respectable newspaper but not one that requires readers to linger over every sentence. Still, compared with most news accounts, Jacoby’s essay requires close reading. Notice that it zigs and zags, not because Jacoby is careless but because in building a strong case to support her point of view, she must consider some widely held views that she does not accept; she must set these forth and then give her reasons for rejecting them.