Rephrasing vs. Summarizing: Techniques & Tips in Writing

Writing is one of the hardest skills to master, as it requires a complete understanding of numerous approaches, strategies, and tactics. Among those, rephrasing and summarizing are two of the most common ones.

Rephrasing and summarizing are two useful techniques that make it easier for people to traverse the world of writing. These two methods are connected to one another. Therefore, mastering one necessitates the understanding of the other. This interconnectedness often puzzles beginners. As a result, they start using summarizing and rephrasing interchangeably. If you also have a similar confusion, this place will help you clarify it.

In this blog content, we’ll go over the basic concept, goal, and tips required to master both rephrasing and summarizing. To understand the differences between these two writing approaches easily, we’ll conduct a head-to-head comparison here. So, let’s delve in without any further delay.

The Core Concepts of Rephrasing and Summarizing

It is important to grasp the fundamental ideas behind both rephrasing and summarizing to compare them more effectively. So, let’s begin by rephrasing before going on to summarizing.

Rephrasing

The word ‘rephrase’ is a combination of two words: ‘re’ and ‘phrase.’ Since the term ‘re’ simply means ‘to do something again,’ this writing strategy revolves around restating current information while avoiding plagiarism. That information can consist of one or many phrases and paragraphs.

Rephrasing is only successful when the rephrased text is not identical to its original form. Therefore, if you want to rephrase something, you must use your own knowledge to modify the words and sentences. Otherwise, it will be impossible for you to prevent plagiarism while revamping existing content.

Summarizing

The word ‘summarizing’ originates from the term: ‘sum up.’ Therefore, this writing technique entails providing an overview or synopsis of existing data. That data can be a passage from a book, a movie, a real-life event, etc.

Much like rephrasing, summarizing requires a thorough knowledge of the original information. Plus, it is critical to utilize your own wording when delivering an abstract or brief of existing info. This way, you won’t overlook important facts or fall prey to plagiarism.

Tips of the Trade to Master Summarizing and Rephrasing

You may have realized by now that implementing both summarizing and rephrasing necessitates a thorough comprehension of the original material. So, before proceeding to the tips listed below, be sure you understand the information you wish to rephrase or summarize to the point where you can describe it without referring to it directly. But if that’s not the case, the following suggestions will be useless:

How to Rephrase a Piece of Information?

To rephrase a piece of information, you can:

• Use contextually correct synonyms.
• Change word classes.
• Tweak the sentence structures.

After applying these tips, you need to verify:

• If the rephrased version conveys the same meaning.
• Whether the rephrased form looks unique.

But if that’s not the case, you will have to implement the above-mentioned tips again. You can also utilize our AI rephraser. The tool takes assistance from cutting-edge machine-learning models and language-processing algorithms to automate the whole process. Besides rephrasing, our AI-powered rephrase tool can also make the text clearer or more appropriate for a particular audience without altering the original message. So, if you can’t rephrase something on your own, you can consider taking aid from technology.

How to Summarize Something?

To summarize something, you need to:

• Focus on the key ideas.
• Discard all the unnecessary details.
• Use your own writing style.

After implementing these recommendations, review the created summary. If you are unable to understand the same idea that the original (source) variant delivers, you will have to repeat the summarizing process.

You can also leverage our AI summarizing utility, as it relies on the combination of hybrid (abstractive and extractive) summarization approaches and artificial intelligence. This fusion helps our tool to efficiently summarize any entered text. So, if you can’t summarize something on your own, you can consider taking aid from our AI-based text summarizer. 

Samples Demonstrating the Instances of a Perfectly Rephrased and Summarized Text

To better understand the comparison of summarizing and rephrasing, let’s consider the following source text:

In an attempt to keep up with its buddies who have already passed over, the nimble brown fox leaps over the slothful dog.

Rephrased Form: The swift brown fox jumps over the slow dog because it is trying to catch up with its friends who have already crossed to the other side.

Summarized Form: A fox leaps over a lethargic dog to join its companions.

As you can see, the source text is difficult to read and comprehend. However, both the rephrased and summarized form have elevated the readability of the same text without altering the original meaning.

Summarizing Vs. Rephrasing — The Key Differences

Rephrasing and summarizing both can enhance the understanding of an existing piece of information. However, there are some key differences between these two writing techniques. The points below represent those differences:

Scope

Experts usually use summarization to convey broader concepts and comprehensive overviews of books, chapters, or papers.

Rephrasing, on the other hand, is suitable for unique details and specific topics.

Length

Summaries are always briefer and more condensed than the original variant.

However, rephrased pieces of content have around the same length as the original version. 

Wrapping Up

To sum up, rephrasing and summarizing both call for demonstrating your understanding of the original content. Therefore, the wording used in the rephrased and summarized content must not be identical to that of the original. Plus, both approaches require proper source citations. Otherwise, plagiarism can become a problem for you. However, summarizing and rephrasing are two distinct strategies. When summarizing anything, you need to elaborate on the most important details in your own words. But there is no such requirement in rephrasing. This technique depends entirely on using your own words to convey an already-existing idea while maintaining the original meaning. So, we hope that after reading this blog post, you will no longer be confused between these two writing concepts anymore.