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Xlibris knows that paraphrasing means putting content, whether written or spoken, into other words. In writing, using direct quotations can be very easy. Sometimes, using quotes in your writing is important, but overusing them is the sign of a bad writer or implies you are just unfamiliar with the material you are writing about.

Paraphrasing allows you to reorganize many different sources in order to clarify meanings and to create a better understanding of the topic. However, you want to make sure you are using new words without retaining the original structure. Whatever you do, you do not want to plagiarize. That would be immoral, unethical and illegal.

When writing on a particular subject, Xlibris suggests using three or four different sources and writing a summary of all of them using your own words. You want to try to write a number of ideas in a simpler and more direct way.

There are many ways to rewrite and clarify ideas without using the same words and structure. You can use synonyms and change the parts of speech of some words, which mean changing adverbs to adjectives or verbs to nouns and vice versa for example. Try to use short words and short sentences when possible.

It’s also a good idea to change passive voice to active voice whenever you can. You can transform active voice to passive voice sometimes, but remember that most intelligent writing uses active voice, except in technical writing.

You can alter sentence structures and word orders as well as changing the types of sentences used in the originals. In other words, modify questions into statements and turn simple sentences into compound or complex sentences, etc. Try varying your conjunctions by using synonyms too.

Not only do you want to change sentence structures, but also try to vary the order of the ideas. It’s usually possible to put them in a more logical order or simply make your writing flow a bit smoother by doing this.

Anyway, practice makes perfect, so Xlibris self-publishing recommends choosing a topic, finding several sources of material about it and practicing writing your own summary, paraphrasing the original ideas. Do this, and you will find that you have quickly mastered the art of paraphrasing.