How to paraphrase without plagiarizing

Read the passage a couple of times until the idea is clear enough to explain to someone else. If you cannot say it without looking, read it again before writing anything.

Hide the original text, then write the idea in your own words and sentence structure. Memory breaks the pull of the author's phrasing; just swapping single words for synonyms still copies the structure.

Leave names, dates, numbers, and technical terms exactly as they are, and rebuild the explanation around them. Changing a precise term to sound different risks changing the meaning.

Paraphrase evidence you weave into your own argument; quote definitions, uniquely worded claims, or passages you discuss word by word. Even a short copied phrase belongs in quotation marks.

The idea still belongs to its author. Add an in-text citation where the paraphrase appears and a full entry in the reference list — a clean rewrite without credit is still plagiarism.

Export the finished text to Word or PDF, reopen the file, and compare against the source one last time: meaning preserved, terms exact, every paraphrase cited.