Paraphrasing quoted materials

1. USING PARAPHRASED
QUOTATIONS
A Guide to Selecting, Integrating, and Citing in APA Style (7th ed.)

2. Step 1: Choose a Passage that
Supports Your Position
Just like when using
quotations, the most important
part of the process is finding a
passage that effectively
supports your position, idea, or
statement.
Depending on the assignment,
you may need one, two, or
several sources to support your
ideas. Sometimes these
sources have many lines that
you want to use. This is a good
time to paraphrase.

3. Step 1:
Choose a
Passage that
Supports
Your Position
(continued)
Say, for example, that I want to make the point
that Desiree’s racial heritage is unknown in Kate
Chopin’s “Desiree’s Baby.”
My first step is to reread the story, looking for the
passage that supports my claim.
What I am looking for is in Volume 2 of your
textbook near the top of page 443:
“Some people thought she might have strayed
there of her own accord, for she was of the
toddling age. The prevailing belief was that she
had been purposely left by a party of Texans,
whose canvas-covered wagon, late in the day,
had crossed the ferry that Coton Mais kept, just
below the plantation.”

4. Step 2: Read the Passage Until You
Fully Understand What Is Being Said
Active reading can also help during this step. Try underlining or
highlighting the passage, circling any words that are unclear to you,
and making notes in the margins.
When paraphrasing source material into your writing, you must
understand the original idea before you begin to put the idea into your
own words. This may involve reading the passage more than once.

5. Step 3:
Summarize
the Ideas in
Your Own
Words It may help to remove the source from your
view while writing the paraphrase. Flip over the
article, close the book, or minimize the window
in which the source appears.
A common misconception is that when
paraphrasing, you only have to change every
third or fifth word of a source. This is plagiarism,
as you cannot copy any words nor the
sentence structure from a source. You must
completely put the idea into your own words.

6. Step 3: Summarize the Ideas in Your
Own Words (continued)
“The prevailing belief was that
she had been purposely left
by a party of Texans, whose
canvas-covered wagon, late
in the day, had crossed the
ferry that Coton Mais kept, just
below the plantation.”
People speculated that
Desiree had been abandoned
by travelers passing through
the area.

7. Step 4: Add
an In-Text
Citation
In-text citations for our textbook are as
follows:
(author last name, original year of
publication/date of textbook
publication, p. # on which the quote
appears)
(Chopin, 1894/2017, p. 443).

8. Step 5: Follow Up Your Quote with a
Sentence
Remind Your Reader
of Your Original Point:
Desiree’s racial
heritage is never
revealed in the
story.
Paraphrased Quote
and Citation:
People speculated that
Desiree had been
abandoned by
travelers passing
through the area
(Chopin, 1894/2017, p.
443).
Follow-Up Sentence:
People wondered but
did not definitively
know exactly where
Desiree had come
from, so her racial
background
remained a
mystery.

9. Step 6: Put it
All Together
Desiree’s racial heritage is never revealed in the
story. People speculated that Desiree had
been abandoned by travelers passing through
the area (Chopin, 1894/2017, p. 443). People
wondered but did not definitively know exactly
where Desiree had come from, so her racial
background remained a mystery.

10. Step 7: Include a Reference Citation
Reference citations for our textbook are as follows:
Author, A.A., & B.B. (Year of textbook publication). Title. In A. Editor & B. Editor (Eds.),
Title of book (edition) (inclusive page numbers). Publisher. (original year of
publication).
Chopin, K. (2017). Desiree’s baby. In R.S. Levine (Eds.), The Norton Anthology of
American Literature (Shorter 9th ed.) (Vol. 2, pp.442-446). W.W. Norton & Company
(Original work published 1894).
(

11. The Finished Product
Desiree’s racial heritage is never revealed in the story. People speculated that Desiree
had been abandoned by travelers passing through the area (Chopin, 1894/2017, p.
443). People wondered but did not definitively know exactly where Desiree had come
from, so her racial background remained a mystery.
Chopin, K. (2017). Desiree’s baby. In R.S. Levine Eds.), The Norton Anthology of
American Literature (Shorter 9th ed.) (Vol. 2, pp. 442-446). W.W. Norton &
Company (Original work published 1894).
How to Cite Editorial Information
If you are using material from the editors of your textbook (e.g., the biographical information
about an author or a footnote), use this format:
In-text citation: (Levine 2017, p. 484)
Reference citation: Levine, R. S. (Ed.) (2017). The Norton Anthology of American Literature (Shorter
9th ed.). Vol. I. beginnings to 1865.W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.