How to Summarize an Article without Plagiarizing in 6 Steps

You do not always need to paraphrase the author’s sentences. You can simply cite them. Citation is really helpful when you are not sure you can provide a proper interpretation. Overall, mixing rewriting with quotes is quite a good idea while writing a summary. Besides, it will help you avoid prooflessness. However, you have to be attentive with citations. If you fail to provide correct formatting, the uniqueness of your text will be lower. 

There are three basic citation styles:

MLA: employ it if your paper is related to Humanities;
Chicago: usually applied to Fine Arts, Political Science, History, Business, etc. 
APA: apply across Psychology, Social Sciences, Education, etc. 

If these options do not seem to be suitable for your paper, you can check these guidelines for other citation styles developed by the University of Pittsburgh.

Remember, any quote you use should go along with your text. Otherwise speaking, it should not be taken out of context.

Paraphrasing of main ideas is also known as rewriting. It implies removing irrelevant details and focusing only on the concepts you need to highlight and paraphrase in your summary. Essential information is often dispersed across the article. Your main goal is to aggregate it within a shortlist. That is why it is important to look through the source up to three times. It will help you pick all necessary details related to particular ideas, rewrite and organize them within your summary.

There are other effective techniques you can employ:
Replacing author’s words with synonyms;
Retelling the original text in your own words;
Changing the wording of particular sentences;
Restructuring and re-arranging the text;
Integrating specific turns of speech;
Explaining terms and specific words that can be unfamiliar to the reader. 

You can adopt all of these techniques or at least some of them.

There are various summarizing techniques you can use to improve your paper. Some of them may seem similar to rewriting. However, they differ. Let’s take a look into the basic options:

Selection

This technique implies that you need to pay attention to particular things while reading an article. Thus, you should highlight core ideas, specific phrases important for understanding, essential terms, etc. You can note down anything that catches your attention such as keywords or the author’s interpretations. Then, you may cite some of them or retell them in different words. Remember, the writing style of a summarized article can differ from the academic format. So, it is important to adapt all specific terms and change the manner of speech if necessary. 

Rejection

The article you summarize almost certainly contains some excessive details, examples, repetitions, and so on. You definitely do not need to include them in your summary. This technique implies sorting the wheat from the chaff. In other words, you need to remove all irrelevant information prioritizing key points.

What else should you reject? 

Statistical data;
Unnecessary details;
Anecdotes;
Specific expressions, etc.

Substitution

You need to substitute everything you cannot reject. If you deal with an academic article or scientific study there are probably a lot of long sentences, redundant phrases, and professional terms that are not always necessary. All these things have to be replaced with shorter sentences, concise wording, or similar terms.

The best way to summarize an article without plagiarizing is to internalize it and provide a concise interpretation of the author’s words. You do not need to analyze or reflect on the text. Look through the source 3 or more times. Note down core ideas, then put the article down and retell the text how you remember it. After that, you need to check if you have underlined all key points and removed unnecessary information.

Try to avoid using the author’s terms and specific phrases as it can lower the uniqueness. Apart from that, you need to restate the main thesis. It can be long but you should convey it with one sentence. Do not copy the sentence structure as a plagiarism checker can detect that. While the core ideas are usually supported with additional examples, facts, and findings, you need to filter them out.

If you use quotes in your summary, the correct citation is not the only thing to keep in mind. You should also provide a proper reference list that includes all sources you refer to. While summarizing an article, you can come across unfamiliar terms. Do not hesitate to check them in the dictionary. 

The reference list should correspond to the citation style you employ. So, the requirements might differ. To prevent errors, it is recommended to check the reference guide provided by your university. Or you can find out official guidelines on authoritative websites. 

Overall, there are some universally applicable rules for all citation styles. For example, references should be organized alphabetically considering the name of the writer and the year of publication. If an article has more than one author, all of them should be listed. These requirements are the same for the dictionaries and other additional materials.

Plagiarism checkers and plagiarism detection software use complex algorithms to analyze the text. Academic plagiarism checkers recommended by universities and colleges usually have access to private academic libraries and databases of students’ works. Thus, you need to pay close attention to commonly used wording. If there are any occasional coincidences in words, phrases, or even sentence structure, they will be detected. As a result, it will affect the uniqueness of your paper.

Plagiarism checkers analyze the structure of the text, its particular components, and the sequence of narration. As a result, the program detects not only copied content but also poorly rewritten materials. Thus, replacing several words and rearranging them will not work well. The program will identify matches and lower the percentage of uniqueness. Herewith, the algorithms of plagiarism checkers are constantly being improved. That is why you should not neglect the techniques mentioned above.