In the ever-changing world of content writing, summarizing and paraphrasing have become essential techniques. You must be familiar with these two techniques as they offer new options to make your writing more attractive and attention-grabbing. But despite the importance of summarizing and paraphrasing, most people still overlook these techniques. That’s where this guide will come in handy.
This guide will teach the roles of summarizing and paraphrasing in content writing. But before getting to the roles, we’ll discuss the concepts of both these techniques from scratch. So, without wasting any time, let’s begin.
Table of Content
What Is Summarizing?
Summarizing is the process of stating the main ideas of an entire source or part of a source in a paragraph or sentence. The important thing here is to write the summary in 'your own' words. However, if you take the exact words from the source, you will have to put the words within 'quotation marks'.
People often take assistance from summarizing techniques when they want to emphasize the essential facts or the original material is too long. As a summary is a brief overview of an entire discussion or argument, you can leave out the distracting details or examples. Instead, you can include essential information to simplify the complex ideas, grammar and vocabulary.
There is no ideal length of a summary. But the rule of thumb is to keep the information as concise as possible. For instance, you can summarize an entire conversation or research paper in a single paragraph with the help of bullet points. But the key is summarizing the information in your words and writing style.
What Is Paraphrasing?
Paraphrasing is the process of presenting the idea of someone’s information in your own words without altering its original meaning. However, unlike summarizing, you will have to include the reference of the source information even after paraphrasing it.
When you paraphrase a piece of information, it makes that information more relevant to the audience. So, paraphrasing clarifies the message of information and gives it a more significant impact.
Paraphrasing can help you maintain a consistent style and avoid lengthy quotations from the source. So, you can take assistance from paraphrasing while writing a report or writing content in a presentation. Similarly, you can also try the paraphrasing technique to support your viewpoint or argument.
Role of Summarizing in Content Writing:
To understand the role of summarizing in the writing industry, you will have to learn its importance. So, let’s see the importance of summarizing in content writing.
1. Helps in Extracting Important Details
As discussed earlier, writing a summary gives a brief overview of a source. So, when you summarize something, you learn to identify its key concepts. Doing this will help you produce essential information to support the identified key concepts.
Thus, the art of summarizing helps in developing the ability to extract key takeaways from a source.
2. Indicates the Focus:
Summarizing teaches you to remember the key phrases and words within a source. But you can only remember something if you are focused. So, when you summarize something, this indicates your focused attitude.
Thus, summarizing helps in indicating how focused you are on your material.
3. Indicates Your Grip on a Topic:
Summarizing helps you think about what you have read. So, if you can write a good summary, this indicates that you understand what you have read.
Thus, summarizing something indicates a strong understanding of that topic.
Role of Paraphrasing in Content Writing:
Like summarizing, let’s understand the role of paraphrasing in content writing by discussing its importance.
1. Helps in Avoiding Plagiarism:
One of the primary reasons for the popularity of paraphrasing or a paraphrasing tool among different writing industries is its ability to avoid plagiarism. As mentioned, writers reword the original material in their wording while paraphrasing something. So, changing the sentence structure or voice of sentences is an ideal way to prevent plagiarism.
Thus, paraphrasing plays a key role in avoiding plagiarism in all writing industries.
2. Polishes the Writing Skills:
You may have understood the concept of a source. But you can only explain in your own words if your writing skills are good. So, learning to write paraphrased material will help you polish your writing skills. And once your writing skills are polished, you can write on any topic with the help of good research.
Thus, paraphrasing can also play a key role in improving your writing skills.
3. Shows the Understanding of a Topic:
You can only explain something in your wording if you have understood its theme. So, if you want to paraphrase something, you must understand its concept first. And when you have rephrased the information, this indicates that you have successfully understood the idea of the original material.
Thus, paraphrasing helps in indicating your understanding of a topic.
The Difference Between Summary and Paraphrasing:
Now, let’s compare paraphrasing and summarizing techniques to see how both approaches stack up against each other.
| SUMMARIZING | PARAPHRASING |
|---|---|
| Writers take assistance from summarizing for including a long selection from a source | Writers take assistance from paraphrasing for including a short selection from a source |
| You can summarize the information of a source if you want to introduce it | Writers take assistance from paraphrasing to avoid plagiarism and excessive quoting |
| You will have to follow a series of steps to summarize the text. However, you can automate the summarizing process by trying a text summarizing tool | Every writer tries a different approach to paraphrasing a piece of information. However, you can automate the paraphrasing procedure by trying a paraphrasing tool |
Conclusion
Paraphrasing and summarizing are critical aspects of any writing industry. Teachers try these techniques to test the knowledge of their students about a topic. Writers take assistance from these techniques to showcase their writing skills.
Often, people try summarizing and paraphrasing interchangeably. But both these terms have distinct meanings. So, we have written this guide to clarify people’s confusion regarding summarizing and paraphrasing.