• to show that an authority supports your point
• to present a position or argument to critique or comment on
• to include especially moving or historically significant language
• to present a particularly well-stated passage whose meaning would be lost or changed if paraphrased or summarized

You should paraphrase when

• what you want from the source is the idea expressed, and not the specific language used to express it

1. Use a signal phrase to show your reader that you are beginning to use paraphrased information. Signal phrases are words like “As Author X indicates….” or “According to Author X’s work on this topic, …..”
   1. You need to provide this signal phrase so that it’s clear to a reader which parts of your essay are your own ideas and which ones are borrowed from sources.
   2. Without the signal phrase, your own ideas and those from sources run together since you are not using quotation marks to indicate a quotation from a source.
2. Provide an in-text citation when you finish your paraphrase. The in-text citation gives the author’s last name and the page number the paraphrased information came from, if the work includes page numbers.
   1. Here is an example: (Gray 44). Notice that there is no “p” or comma. The format is to write the author’s last name, add a space, and write the number of the page.)
3. Pay attention to the signal phrases and in-text citations in the examples that follow.

The Passage as It Appears in the Source

Critical care nurses function in a hierarchy of roles. In this open heart surgery unit, the nurse manager hires and fires the nursing personnel. The nurse manager does not directly care for patients but follows the progress of unusual or long-term patients. On each shift a nurse assumes the role of resource nurse. This person oversees the hour-by-hour functioning of the unit as a whole, such as considering expected admissions and discharges of patients, ascertaining that beds are available for patients in the operating room, and covering sick calls. Resource nurses also take a patient assignment. They are the most experienced of all the staff nurses. The nurse clinician has a separate job description and provides for quality of care by orienting new staff, developing unit policies, and providing direct support where needed, such as assisting in emergency situations. The clinical nurse specialist in this unit is mostly involved with formal teaching in orienting new staff. The nurse manager, nurse clinician, and clinical nurse specialist are the designated experts. They do not take patient assignments. The resource nurse is seen as both a caregiver and a resource to other caregivers. . . . Staff nurses have a hierarchy of seniority. . . . Staff nurses are assigned to patients to provide all their nursing care (Chase 156).

Word-for-Word Plagiarism

As Chase notes, critical care nurses have a hierarchy of roles. The nurse manager hires and fires nurses. S/he does not directly care for patients but does follow unusual or long-term cases. On each shift a resource nurse attends to the functioning of the unit as a whole, such as making sure beds are available in the operating room, and also has a patient assignment. The nurse clinician orients new staff, develops policies, and provides support where needed. The clinical nurse specialist also orients new staff, mostly by formal teaching. The nurse manager, nurse clinician, and clinical nurse specialist, as the designated experts, do not take patient assignments. The resource nurse is not only a caregiver but a resource to the other caregivers. Within the staff nurses there is also a hierarchy of seniority. Their job is to give assigned patients all their nursing care (Chase 156).

 Why this is plagiarism

 Notice that the writer largely maintained the author’s method of expression and sentence structure. The underlined phrases are directly copied from the source or changed only slightly in form.

 The language of this passage is considered plagiarized because no quotation marks indicate the phrases that come directly from Chase. And if quotation marks did appear around all these phrases, this paragraph would be so cluttered that it would be unreadable.

A Patchwork Paraphrase

Chase describes how nurses in a critical care unit function in a hierarchy that places designated experts at the top and the least senior staff nurses at the bottom. The experts — the nurse manager, nurse clinician, and clinical nurse specialist — are not involved directly in patient care. The staff nurses, in contrast, are assigned to patients and provide all their nursing care. Within the staff nurses is a hierarchy of seniority in which the most senior can become resource nurses: they are assigned a patient but also serve as a resource to other caregivers. The experts have administrative and teaching tasks such as selecting and orienting new staff, developing unit policies, and giving hands-on support where needed (156).

 Why this is plagiarism

This paraphrase is a patchwork composed of pieces in the original author’s language (underlined) and pieces in the student-writer’s words, all rearranged into a new pattern, but with none of the borrowed pieces in quotation marks. Thus, even though the writer acknowledges the source of the material, the underlined phrases are falsely presented as the student’s own.

A Legitimate Paraphrase

In her study of the roles of nurses in a critical care unit, Chase also found a hierarchy that distinguished the roles of experts and others. Just as the educational experts described above do not directly teach students, the experts in this unit do not directly attend to patients. That is the role of the staff nurses, who, like teachers, have their own “hierarchy of seniority” (156). The roles of the experts include employing unit nurses and overseeing the care of special patients (nurse manager), teaching and otherwise integrating new personnel into the unit (clinical nurse specialist and nurse clinician), and policy-making (nurse clinician). In an intermediate position in the hierarchy is the resource nurse, a staff nurse with more experience than the others, who assumes direct care of patients as the other staff nurses do, but also takes on tasks to ensure the smooth operation of the entire facility (156).

  Why this is a good paraphrase

The writer has documented Chase’s material and specific language (by direct reference to the author and by quotation marks around language taken directly from the source). Notice too that the writer has modified Chase’s language and structure and has added material to fit the new context and purpose — to present the distinctive functions of experts and nonexperts in several professions.

Shared Language

Perhaps you’ve noticed that a number of phrases from the original passage appear in the legitimate paraphrase: critical care, staff nurses, nurse manager, clinical nurse specialist, nurse clinician, resource nurse.

When you repeat such phrases, you’re not stealing the unique phrasing of an individual writer but using a common vocabulary shared by a community of scholars. These words are the common terms defining and naming things in this profession. As such, they do not need to be placed in quotation marks unless they are part of a quotation.

Some Examples of Shared Language You Don’t Need to Put in Quotation Marks from the World of Education

• Terms and phrases of a discipline or genre: e.g. teachers, students, professors, curriculum, tuition, etc.