Paraphrasing and Citation

Published

October 2, 2025

Paraphrasing and citation: Some key questions

Why should I cite?
The simple answer is: You are expected to cite. Through your citations, you give the authors credit, you help readers (including teachers) tell which parts of the paper are yours and which you’ve drawn from others’ work, and you supply readers with the information they need to look into your source further.
When should I cite a paraphrase?
In high school, a lot of us learned that if we rewrite the source materials in our own words, then we didn’t have to cite it. That’s wrong. When you put some else’s work in your own words, that’s a paraphrase. And anytime you write a paraphrase, you must cite!
What if I’m using a general idea, not a specific sentence or paragraph?
That’s still paraphrasing! Like other paraphrasing, you need to cite references for general ideas.
This seems pretty complicated?
While some of the details of how to format a citation can be tricky, the basic rule of whether to give a citation is simple: Whenever you’re using an idea from someone else, you need to give them credit with a citation. It doesn’t matter whether you’re quoting or paraphrasing, if it’s not your idea you need a cite.

Formatting citations for quotations and paraphrasing

In social sciences and humanities, there are three common citation styles: APA (American Psychological Association), MLA (Modern Language Association), and Chicago (Chicago Manual of Style, sometimes abbreviated CMS). (Chicago actually includes two different styles, called “author-date” and “notes-bibliography.” Notes-bibliography works differently from the other SSHA styles, and we won’t talk about it here.) The bibliographies for these three styles can look pretty different from each other, but citations are very similar.

There are two basic citation patterns, depending on whether you name the author in the text of the sentence itself.

When the author isn’t named in the text, use a parenthetical cite immediately after a quote or at the end of a paraphrased sentence.

[MLA] Romantic poetry is characterized by the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (Wordsworth 263).

[APA] A meta-analysis of available literature (Jones, 1998) revealed inconsistency across large-scale studies of student learning (Table 3).

When the author is named in the text, the parenthetical cite doesn’t include their name. If there’s a year, put it in parentheses directly after the author’s name. Otherwise you just give a page cite.

[APA] According to Jones (1998), “students often had difficulty using APA style, especially when it was their first time” (p. 199).

[APA] Jones (1998) found “students often had difficulty using APA style” (p. 199); what implications does this have for teachers?

[MLA] Wordsworth stated that Romantic poetry was marked by a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (263).

[MLA] Wordsworth extensively explored the role of emotion in the creative process (263).

[Chicago] Recently, the history of warfare has been significantly revised by Higonnet et al. (1987), Marcus (1989), and Raitt and Tate (1997) to include women’s personal and cultural responses to battle and its resultant traumatic effects.

If you don’t know the author, usually you use the title of the source instead.

[MLA] We see so many global warming hotspots in North America likely because this region has “more readily accessible climatic data and more comprehensive programs to monitor and study environmental change . . .” (“Impact of Global Warming”).

If there are two or three authors, use all of their names.

[MLA] Best and Marcus argue that one should read a text for what it says on its surface, rather than looking for some hidden meaning (9).

[MLA] The authors claim that surface reading looks at what is “evident, perceptible, apprehensible in texts” (Best and Marcus 9).

If it’s three or more authors then use just the first author and et al. (including the period!), which is a Latin phrase meaning “and others.”

[MLA] According to Franck et al., “Current agricultural policies in the U.S. are contributing to the poor health of Americans” (327).

(In the bibliography) Franck, Caroline, et al. “Agricultural Subsidies and the American Obesity Epidemic.” American Journal of Preventative Medicine, vol. 45, no. 3, Sept. 2013, pp. 327-333.

Note

APA and CMS both include publication dates in parenthetical cites. MLA doesn’t. APA puts “p.” before the page number; MLA and CMS don’t.

Because MLA doesn’t use publication dates, it distinguishes different works by the same author by including the title in the parenthetical cite. More on MLA here.

Evaluating good and bad paraphrases

First, read this passage:

Writing instructors distinguish between process and product . . . Although you should keep in mind what your product will look like, writing is more involved with how you get to that goal. ‘Process’ concerns how you work to actually write a paper. What do you actually do to get started? How do you organize your ideas? Why do you make changes along the way as you write? Thinking of writing as a process is important because writing is actually a complex activity. Even professional writers . . . stop along the way to revise portions they have drafted, to move ideas around, or to revise their opening and thesis. Professionals and students alike often say they only realized what they wanted to say after they started to write. This is why many instructors see writing as a way to learn. (Rogers and Miley 2010, 285)1

Then, look over the six paraphrases of this passage below. For each paraphrase, work with your group to write a few sentences that assess the paraphrase by answering these questions:

  • Is the paraphrase accurate?
  • Is it a paraphrase (different words) or an unmarked quotation (same words)?
  • Is the source given credit correctly, in either the sentence or in parentheses?
  1. The “product” is the final piece of writing that you submit to your professor, while the “process” pertains to how a writer creates their work (Rogers and Miley 285).
  2. According to Rogers and Miley, we should consider some key things when writing a paper. They mention how you begin a paper, the organization of concepts and how you make changes in your writing. These steps are all a part of one’s writing “process” (285).
  3. Professional writers and college students both often say they only realized what they wanted to say after they started writing.
  4. College Success explains that writers are usually a bit unsure of what they want to convey when they start. Once they write, they know better what they want to say. In other words, “they only realized what they wanted to say after they started to write.” That’s because writing requires us to clarify our understanding of new ideas, thus helping us to learn (Rogers and Miley 285).
  5. For many people, writing is not a simple straightforward process. Even pros typically reorganize and edit their work before they submit it (Rogers and Miley 285).
  6. Thinking of writing as a process is important. That’s because writing is actually a complex activity. Even professional writers rarely sit down at a keyboard and write out an article beginning to end. They stop along the way to revise portions they have drafted, to move ideas around, or to revise their opening and thesis (College Success 285).
Note

This page incorporates material from these sources:

Footnotes

  1. This passage originally comes from a book that has been removed from publication, with the original publisher and authors de-identified. I didn’t want to have to redo all of the materials for this exercise with a new passage, and citing the title rather than the authors is a distraction. So I’ve added two fictional author names.↩︎