How
to paraphrase – and how not to!
Paraphrasing
means re-writing something in your own words. Many students
make the mistake of using a process of substitution: they
start with someone else’s text, and then look for words to
change, using a thesaurus or a dictionary to give them words
that have the same meaning. This is bad. When you take
something that is well-written, every word has been
carefully chosen. If you substitute another word with the
same meaning, it becomes awkward, and nuances are lost.
Frequently the meaning is changed.
Consider the
following attempt to paraphrase a famous song by
substituting words that, supposedly, have the same meaning
as the original lyrics:
You consider you have
miss-placed your affection.
I witnessed her the day
before today.
It is you that she is
cogitating of, and she informed me what to speak.
She stated that she
likes you, and you are certain that cannot be evil.
She likes you, and you
are justified in believing that you ought to be joyful.
She likes you. I agree,
I agree, I agree.
With a like like that,
you are certain you ought to be joyful.
Arrogance can also
injure you.
Make reparations to
her, because she is amorous towards you, and you are
rightfully certain you should be happy.
She is amorous towards
you, and you have concluded correctly that you should be in
a positive frame of mind.
She likes you. I agree,
I agree, I agree.
With a feeling or deep
disposition of fondness towards someone typically arising
from a recognition of natural qualities like that, you are
in a frame of mind that indicates that you should be merry
in disposition.
You
will notice that my preferred version is shorter. It
conveys the essentials, and does not shrink from using the
two key words of the song – “love” and “yeah”. Wikipedia
has a strict rule about not giving lyrics for songs that
are still in copyright, and so Wikipedia entries for
popular current songs often include this kind of
paraphrase.
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