What is the Difference between Summarizing and Paraphrasing?

Whether it is academic writing or creative writing, both demand effectiveness. Lacking efficacy reduces the quality of content and proves harmful to driving desired results. To make content valuable and persuasive, both writers and students often need to source information from others.

This is where summarizing and paraphrasing come into play. These are the smart writing techniques that allow you to make fair use of existing material to back your arguments. Although both of them deal with the use of external information, they have significant differences.

They differ not only in their intended purpose but also significantly in how they are applied. That’s why it is essential to comprehend how these techniques are different from each other. Understanding the dissimilarities between them enables you to make the most of them.

For your convenience, we have crafted this article that elaborates on how summarizing and paraphrasing are distinct from each other. So, if you want to clear your confusion about both terms, continue reading this article till the end, and don’t miss out on anything.

Ready to get started? Let’s dive in.

What Is Summarizing?

Summarizing is a controlled writing approach that aims to distill vast amounts of information into concise content. It doesn’t only focus on shortening the text but also on retaining the most important information in the summarized version.  

What Is Paraphrasing?

Paraphrasing means restating the existing information in such a way that it becomes apparently different but contextually the same. It emphasizes rejuvenating already-present information without sacrificing the original meanings and overall text quality.

What Does Summarizing Mainly Involve?

Since summarizing mainly intends to condense information, there are some different steps you need to follow to summarize the text. Here are some practices that are a must for summarizing.

Identifying Main Ideas

Identifying core details is the most crucial step in summarizing. It involves reading reference content thoroughly and recognizing key points. This is where you might often struggle because finding core details accurately is tricky. However, if you somehow fail to do so, don’t worry.

You can get assistance from text summarizing tool a trusted web utility by Plagiarismchecker.co. This proficient tool utilizes advanced algorithms to spot and gather key points. It gratifies your summarizing needs efficiently.

Writing To The Point

Another important part of summarizing is explaining identified points while staying to the point. When writing briefly, you have to take a few things into account like the use of words, sentence-making, and amount of information. Condensing existing material involves explaining the main information using as few words as you can without compromising on quality.

Also, it requires you to make appropriate use of sentence structures to complete explanations briefly. For example, if a statement can be expressed in one short sentence, summarizing doesn’t allow you to make two to three sentences for this purpose.

What Does Paraphrasing Mainly Involve?

Paraphrasing is not a quick process. It involves making significant changes to the reference material, and those modifications require you to do the following essential things: 

Making Word Replacements

In paraphrasing, making appropriate word replacements holds key importance. This practice helps you change the appearance of old text. It creates notable apparent differences between the already-present and the paraphrased content. Changing words doesn’t mean putting any random words in content that doesn’t add meaning to the sentence.

Rather, it involves targeting specific words and replacing them with the right synonyms that perfectly fit the context. Remember, you can only make appropriate modifications to words if you read the sample content with a keen focus. 

Changing Sentence Structures

Restructuring sentences is also a technique that is mainly used in paraphrasing. It includes restating lines from the original text in a unique way using simple language. However, changing the sentence structures without creating complications is not everyone’s cup of tea. Mostly, people inadvertently use complicated sentences that hurt the essence of paraphrasing.   

However, with a competent free paraphrasing tool, it is not a problem anymore. It serves as a helping hand in making sentence changes. This tool restates text in such a way that it becomes unique in structure and clear in language.    

Paraphrasing vs Summarizing: Key Differences

Paraphrasing and summarizing don’t just differ in procedure; they also have many other prominent differences. Here is a detailed explanation of the major contrasts between them.

Purpose

In paraphrasing, the goal is to paraphrase existing content in such a way that the original meaning doesn’t get compromised. It is aimed at conveying the same message using different words and sentences. While paraphrasing, using clear language and retaining the essence of the original text is considered crucial. 

Summarizing is intended to compress the information without missing the key points. Its main purpose is to create a concise version of long-form text so one can easily grasp the core details. To achieve this objective, unnecessary details are omitted, and only the most essential points are given significance. 

Length

Paraphrasing doesn’t involve shortening or lengthening text. It only focuses on the original message and clear communication. Normally, the paraphrased text is nearly equal in length to its original version. However, its length may get extended or reduced a little bit unintentionally.

On the other hand, summarizing is associated with condensing information, and short text length is prioritized. Usually, the summarized content is half or one-third of the original material. The summary can be further shortened depending on the purpose for which it is going to be used.

Detail Level

In contrast, paraphrasing doesn’t involve excluding any details. Also, it doesn’t include mentioning extra information that is not present in the original text. Rather, in paraphrasing, you read the reference material and explain your understanding of the original content using your own words and thoughts. 

As already discussed, summarizing is all about describing the most important information in the fewest words. Overexplaining things and extending the length of content intentionally are not the parts of summarizing. A summary includes only the details that matter the most. 

Use

Paraphrasing is widely used in both academic and professional landscapes. Writers capitalize on this technique to repurpose and refresh old content.  On the other hand, students use paraphrasing to make fair use of existing educational material and avoid plagiarism. However, it is not just limited to students and professionals; it can be used by anyone involved in writing. 

Summarizing is used when you have to extract key information from complex content. Also, it aids in providing a brief overview of long-form content. Also, you can use it for the readers’ convenience so that they can understand your message quickly by spending less time reading. Well, these are not its only applications. It can be used in many other situations.

To Sum Up

To put it in a nutshell, summarizing and paraphrasing differ in procedure, purpose, length, and applications. We hope that you have gone through all these differences thoroughly and now understand how summarizing is distinct from paraphrasing. So, from now on, we expect that you will make the right use of these writing techniques.