Law

As well as the guidance on these pages, we recommend you refer to the Referencing library guide and to the Cite Them Right database:

The difference between a quote and a paraphrase is an important one.

A quote occurs when you use the author’s exact words within the body of your own work. A paraphrase occurs when you substantially alter what the author has said and present it in your own words.

In writing an essay, students will generally refer to a variety of primary and secondary sources, and may legitimately paraphrase the ideas contained in these sources. This is good academic practice, which demonstrates your engagement with research. However, these sources must still be fully referenced.

There are various sorts of paraphrasing. The first may be described as syntactical paraphrasing, e.g. where the sentence is changed from the present to the past tense, or some synonyms are used, or where the word order may be changed. If this is not referenced it will amount to plagiarism. Even if referenced, this is not work of acceptable degree standard because it demonstrates lack of qualitative understanding or critical evaluation on your part because you have not used your own words.

The second form of paraphrasing distils the essence of a legal argument. Here, after reading a number of sources, a student summarises, in their own words, the key elements of an idea or argument. This goes beyond superficial changes in style or grammar, and requires a degree of internal processing of the legal concepts involved. In contrast with syntactical paraphrasing, a degree of legal expertise is necessary in order to link the paraphrase with its source. However it must be stressed that even if you are properly paraphrasing, as in this example, full and proper citations must always be supplied.

Adapted UoP from Law Coursework Manual 2022-2023