4.7 Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing is rewriting another person’s words in your own words, while still presenting them as expressing that other person’s ideas. Just how you might phrase your paraphrase will depend on a great variety of things; there is no fixed set of rules governing this art. Explaining or interpreting someone else’s text in your own words can sometimes be difficult, but being able to paraphrase well is a very important skill and worth working hard at developing.
It is often better to paraphrase instead of quoting because paraphrasing requires you to understand the original idea in order to communicate it adequately to your reader. It demonstrates your understanding more clearly if the text is in your own words, rather than a direct recitation of someone else’s words.
TIP: PARAPHRASING IS RE-PHRASING
Good paraphrasing helps you to convey to your reader that you have not just located some relevant passage from another person’s work but have also actually understood it. Note, however, that paraphrasing is not just changing some key words but leaving the rest intact. It involves a full restatement – or re–phrasing – of the ideas underpinning the original quote.
It is still necessary, when paraphrasing, to indicate that this is what you are doing and to provide proper information about the source of the paraphrased content both in the text and in the footnote. However, indicating that you are paraphrasing cannot be done by way of quotation marks or indented paragraphs. It is a more subtle matter of using your own words to indicate that you are paraphrasing another. This can be done in many ways.
4.7.1 How to paraphrase
Because paraphrasing is a much more creative art than simple quotation, it is probably best to provide several examples of how a short passage may be paraphrased. The paraphrased passage in the examples below is from the Fuller text used above. Remember that the original quote is: ‘The desideratum of clarity represents one of the most essential ingredients of legality.’
EXAMPLE 4.6
… to maintain and promote individuals’ freedom. Fuller maintains that this desired clarity is a necessary element for something to count as law.8 Indeed, it is almost impossible to conceive of a legal system where such a criterion …
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8 Lon L. Fuller, The Morality of Law (Yale University Press, rev ed, 1969) 63.
EXAMPLE 4.7
… to maintain and promote individuals’ freedom. It is a requirement for any legal system, in Fuller’s view, that its laws are reasonably clearly ascertainable.8 Indeed, it is almost impossible to conceive of a legal system …
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8 Lon L. Fuller, The Morality of Law (Yale University Press, rev ed, 1969) 63.
In these first two examples, you are making it explicit in your text that you are paraphrasing Fuller’s words, and your footnote gives the reader the source of the original text.
EXAMPLE 4.8
… to maintain and promote individuals’ freedom. Indeed, clarity is so important that, in the view of some, laws that lack sufficient clarity may not qualify as laws at all.8 Indeed, it is almost impossible to conceive of a …
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8 Lon L. Fuller, The Morality of Law (Yale University Press, rev ed, 1969) 63.
In this third example, you have not referred to Fuller explicitly in your text, but you have more obliquely indicated that you are expounding someone else’s idea. It is only in the footnote that you expressly mention Fuller. This is acceptable as this still indicates the ideas come from Fuller.
EXAMPLE 4.9
… to maintain and promote individuals’ freedom. It might even be argued that clarity is so important that laws that lack sufficient clarity may not qualify as laws at all.8 Indeed, it is almost impossible to conceive of a legal …
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8 Lon L. Fuller, The Morality of Law (Yale University Press, rev ed, 1969) 63.
In this fourth example, the reference to Fuller is even more oblique but still acceptable.
EXAMPLE 4.10
… to maintain and promote individuals’ freedom. Indeed, clarity is so important that laws that lack sufficient clarity may not qualify as laws at all.8 Indeed, it is almost impossible to conceive of a legal system where …
________
8 Lon L. Fuller, The Morality of Law (Yale University Press, rev ed, 1969) 63.
This last example is acceptable but close to the borderline (and very common among early law students). The text gives no indication that you are paraphrasing another; only the provision of the footnote indicates this. This style is acceptable, so long as it is clear from the context that this is what you are doing. It is usually safer to include some textual indication as well, as in the first two examples in this section.
4.7.2 A common weakness: overly thin paraphrases
Because it can sometimes be hard to think of your own way of expressing someone else’s words (especially when the other person says it so well already), there is a temptation to ‘rewrite’ the original passage by substituting only one or two words. This sort of ‘thin’ paraphrase is really more like a quotation than a proper paraphrase – and if you have thereby effectively quoted the original but not used quotation marks or an indented paragraph, then you will be courting trouble. This is because it will look like an inadequately referenced, and indeed inaccurate, quotation.
A bad example of a paraphrase (using Fuller’s text again) follows.
EXAMPLE OF BAD PRACTICE
… to maintain and promote individuals’ freedom. The desirable clarity is one of the most essential ingredients of legality.8 Indeed, it is almost impossible to conceive of a legal system where such a criterion was not made central to …
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8 Lon L. Fuller, The Morality of Law (Yale University Press, rev ed, 1969) 63.
The above example looks like a paraphrase when it is in fact such a thin paraphrase that it is almost a direct quotation.
TIP: EITHER PARAPHRASE PROPERLY OR JUST QUOTE
If you are paraphrasing, make a proper job of it and recast the whole passage being paraphrased, making your words sufficiently different from the original passage.
If you really are unable to put an idea into different words, just quote it.
A good essay, or other piece of work, will have a combination of quotes and paraphrasing but the balance should be in favour of paraphrasing. Again, putting information into your own words is the best way to show you have understood it.
It can sometimes be difficult to judge whether your rewritten version of the original is a proper paraphrase. Moreover, what counts as ‘too thin’ can vary according to whether you are paraphrasing an original work by an author, a judgment or a statute. Again, there are no fixed rules for determining this.
TIP: PARAPHRASE ACCURATELY
When trying to avoid an overly thin paraphrase, be careful not to be too creative and make your words so different from the original text that you end up misrepresenting it. A paraphrase should still aim to present an accurate picture of the paraphrased text.
You should also put down the thesaurus: do not simply look for synonyms to replace words in the original phrase. Often in the law, not all synonyms are created equal.
4.7.3 Paraphrasing legal authorities
It will sometimes be appropriate to paraphrase legal authorities such as cases and statutes. Paraphrasing such texts is usually more constrained than paraphrasing original works by private authors, because you must be even more careful not to misrepresent what the terms of the law are. This is especially so for legislation, which, unlike the common law, is in fixed written form.
TIP: BE WARY OF PARAPHRASING TECHNICAL TERMS
Law can be technical and a word in law can have a different meaning to the same word in a non-law context. A good rule of thumb is that when dealing with law from cases or statutes, you should adopt the language of the original source rather than change it to something that means essentially the same thing.
It will often be safer to quote directly the specific words of a statutory provision or a judicial decision rather than risk a misleading paraphrase by straying too far from the actual text. Sometimes, though, the demands of space or the nature of the task you are engaged in make paraphrasing the law appropriate instead. As always, one needs to exercise good judgment in particular cases about whether it is best to paraphrase or to quote directly.
Here is an example of an acceptable paraphrase of the passage from R v Williscroft quoted earlier. (To get a sense of what makes it acceptable, you will need to know the context of the original. This point goes for virtually all paraphrasing.)
PARAPHRASE FROM A CASE
… in criminal justice. This principle is perhaps most famously articulated in R v Williscroft. In this case, Adam and Crockett JJ held that all sentences involve the judge intuitively bringing together the different purposes of punishment in order to settle upon a particular sentence.8 Whether this is …
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8 R v Williscroft [1975] VR 292, 300 (Adam and Crockett JJ).
When paraphrasing legislation, it is usually best to stick even more closely to the text than when paraphrasing academic authors or even legal judgments.
The following acceptable paraphrase is of the statutory provision quoted earlier.
PARAPHRASE FROM A STATUTE
… forms of fraud. The Crimes Act 1958 (Vic) clarifies this by making it an offence to make a false document intending that another person will accept it as genuine and do something to their or a third party’s detriment.8 It is, therefore, clear from the terms of the statute that prejudice to a third party …
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8 Crimes Act 1958 (Vic) s 83A(1).
