A Guide To Using Paraphrasing Tools In Research Papers

Academic research is a noble pursuit and a prestigious career as well. Many students aim to be proper researchers and become renowned professors and have a couple of research papers under their belt.

However, this career is not so easy as:

1. Having a topic big enough to cause ripples is rare
2. Badly written papers perform poorly.

Paraphrasing is the art of rewriting and rewording some text without changing its meaning. It serves multiple important functions and is a crucial skill to have for any writer. It allows writers to deal with point ‘b’ and improve the writing quality of their paper.

Advantages Of Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing is typically used for removing accidental plagiarism and self-plagiarism. These are two relatively harmless types of plagiarism that nevertheless get treated the same way as regular, malicious plagiarism. Hence to avoid destroying your academic career and reputation paraphrasing is used.

It is also utilized in research papers to explain the ideas of other authors that you may have used to support your own points. Obviously, this does mean that proper citation must be provided. But the point is that paraphrasing is used when the idea is good but the wording is not.

Finally, paraphrasing is also used to explain difficult concepts and terms in layman’s terms to non-technical personnel. Such people cannot understand technical jargon. To make sure that they get the message properly, paraphrasing is used.

How To Paraphrase In Research Papers Using Paraphrasing Tools

Typically, in a manual paraphrasing operation the following steps are taken:

1. Read and understand the whole text
2. Put the source aside and write the whole thing from memory using your own words
3. Write only the parts that are relevant to the main point
4. Check the paraphrased parts against the original to see if they are still similar or not.

Obviously, there is no such thing involved when using paraphrasing tools, except maybe step four. When paraphrasing using online tools, the steps involved are different. You do not need to perform any steps yourself, except those required to operate the tool.

In the following parts of this blog post, some steps and guidelines will be given on how to paraphrase text using online tools, especially when writing research papers.

1. Identify the Parts that Need Paraphrasing

There are a few things that need to be paraphrased in research papers. Most of them can be categorized as follows:

• Portraying ideas of others in your words
• Paraphrasing to put emphasis on certain words and concepts
• Reducing material that goes off on a tangent.

When writing a research paper, utmost care must be taken that the content written is not confusing or too long-winded. Sometimes writers start raving and start discussing irrelevant details. These parts should be paraphrased and all the tangential material should be whittled down.

Similarly, if you have to use some ideas and concepts provided by other authors, you need to be able to put them in your own words, so that they fit your content much better. Many times, you may have to paraphrase text to put emphasis on certain words and concepts so that the readers’ attention goes there. You can do all of this by using a paraphrasing tool.

There are plenty of options available, and free paraphrasers are in fact, very competent. They have many features that can give paid tools a run for their money. At this stage though, you are only identifying what needs to be paraphrased and not actually doing anything else.

2. Select an Appropriate Tool

When you have identified which part of your research paper needs to be paraphrased, then you can move on to choosing an appropriate paraphraser. We know that there are at least three unique situations where paraphrasing is required.

To deal with portraying the ideas of others in different wording, you must choose a tool that has an option to make the text more readable. That is because paraphrasing words of other people is only necessary when the original wording is either difficult or just not good.

If you are aiming to remove tangential content from your work, then you need to choose a paraphraser that has options to exclude certain keywords from the process. That way you can specify the keywords used to describe something and everything except them will be rewritten. The content will also be molded to match them and the tangent will be reduced.

3. Input the Text and Run the Tool

Now you are ready to paraphrase your text. You have identified what needs to be rewritten and what kind of tool should be used to paraphrase online it. At this stage, you simply need to enter your text in the tool. There are usually input boxes for this purpose and some tools allow you to upload files as well.

Obviously, the input boxes are more useful here as we only need to paraphrase some parts. In a free tool, you may have to complete a captcha and then you will be able to click the confirm button.

But before that, do remember to select the correct mode that is appropriate for your content. After that click “confirm” and wait for the results. Usually, only a few seconds are required for the tool to process and rephrase your text. It can take longer depending on your internet speed.

4. Compare Input and Output

Once the paraphrasing is complete, it is time to compare the input and the output of the tool. It is necessary to do so because you want to check if the paraphrased text is to your liking or not.

If it is satisfactory, then there is no problem you can simply copy it from there and use it in your research paper. If it is not satisfactory, then you have to try either different modes on the same tool, or use a completely different tool.

There is no guarantee that a tool will do the exact kind of rephrasing that you want from it. And chances are you may not find such a tool either. You can either explore some paid options at this point or simply manually paraphrase the text till you are satisfied.

However, it is more likely that you are able to use a different tool to get the results that you wanted. This is where the steps on how to use a paraphraser for research papers end.

Conclusion

Paraphrasing is a necessary skill for every writer, but its nature of taking up time and brain power can be bothersome to deal with especially when there is a lack of time.

Writers can use paraphrasing tools to get rid of all those pain points and get automatically rewritten text. While there aren’t any different tools for different kinds of content, users can take some precautions before utilizing the tools.

Researchers should never try to use paraphrasing to avoid intentional plagiarism as that is illegal and even paraphrased content needs to be cited. The method to ethically use paraphrasing tools for rewriting parts of research papers is discussed in this article and can be followed to get good results.

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