Patchwriting is rarely planned. It usually begins weeks before the essay, in a note: a sentence copied without quotation marks, or a paraphrase written with the page open and a few words changed. By the time you draft, nothing in the note says whose words they are.
This guide is published by EdCitation. It covers patchwriting as Rebecca Moore Howard and the Citation Project describe it in their own papers, note-taking formats from six universities' own pages, and a worked example of our own notes, all read on 2 October 2026.
EdCitation never writes your notes, paraphrases or summaries: those are yours, and that is their value. Cite a source builds the full reference for each source from the publisher's record, and Check plagiarism marks any passage of a draft that still matches published or web text. Choosing between quotation, paraphrase and summary in the essay is in paraphrase, quote or summarise; this guide is about the notes before it.
What is patchwriting?
Patchwriting is writing that stays too close to one source: a passage copied, then altered by deleting words, changing the grammar or swapping words one for one with synonyms. Rebecca Moore Howard named it in "A Plagiarism Pentimento", in an issue of the Journal of Teaching Writing its publisher dates 1992 (Howard, 1992); her later papers give the year as 1993.
Her evidence was her own class at Colgate University in 1986, where nine first-year students had stayed close to the wording of one short reading. Howard counted their tactics: deletion 22 times, synonym substitution 18, changes of grammar or syntax 11, and rearrangement once. Only three times did anyone copy a long passage exactly, and seven of the nine cited the source. Patchwriting turns up mostly in work that already has its citations.
Howard read it as a stage, not a vice: a newcomer working in a field's unfamiliar language, "the outsider's membership application" (Howard, 1992, p. 239). Her remedy was summary, drafted without looking at the original, if need be an hour after reading it. The Citation Project, a series of studies led by Sandra Jamieson and Howard, later defined it by the text rather than the writer: restating a phrase, clause or sentences while staying "close to the language or syntax of the source" (Jamieson & Howard, 2019, p. 81).
Is patchwriting plagiarism?
It depends who is judging. Jamieson and Howard (2019) argue that patchwriting, like faulty citation, is poor writing to be taught, and keep the word cheating for submitting work someone else wrote. MIT's student handbook takes the stricter line: a passage with synonyms swapped in and a citation attached "would be considered plagiarism" (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, n.d.).
Yet the same MIT page lists using synonyms for every word that is not generic as its first paraphrasing strategy, the tactic Howard counted 18 times. Our reading: synonyms are harmless inside a sentence you built yourself, and as the whole method they produce patchwriting. Your university's policy decides how patchwriting is treated; the fix is the same either way, and it starts in your notes.
Why does patchwriting start in your notes?
Because a note is where words lose their owner: three weeks later, an unmarked copy looks like your own writing.
Howard et al. (2010) read 18 undergraduate research papers alongside every source they cited. Sixteen contained patchwriting and none contained a summary. Thirteen copied words without marking them as a quotation, and 14 credited a source with something it did not say or said differently. In almost every case the researchers could find the exact sentence a student had worked from.
Across 1,911 citations in 174 first-year papers from 16 US colleges and universities, Jamieson and Howard (2013) found that 94% worked from isolated sentences rather than summarising a passage or more. Where those sentences sat in their sources is in what studies say about student referencing mistakes. Jamieson and Howard (2019) add that writers slip between paraphrase and patchwriting within one passage, often, they suspect, without noticing.
So notes have two jobs: record whose words are whose, and make you summarise the whole source rather than mine its sentences.
The three notes that turn into patchwriting
- The bare copy: a sentence with no quotation marks and no page. Later it reads as yours.
- The open-book paraphrase: written with the source in view and a few words changed. It is patchwriting already.
- The orphan: a note with no source or page, later credited to the wrong work, the fault Howard et al. (2010) found in 14 of 18 papers.
How do you take research notes without plagiarising?
Record the source first, read before you write, copy only inside quotation marks, paraphrase with the source closed, and keep your own thinking apart.
- Record the source before the first note. Build the full reference in Cite a source from the DOI or ISBN and save it. Procter (n.d.), at the University of Toronto, calls this the master list; each note then needs only the author and the page.
- Read a section before you write. The UNC Learning Center (n.d.) suggests reading up to a page, pausing, and writing notes at the end of the page so that you summarise rather than copy.
- Copy only what you might quote, in quotation marks, with the page, as you copy it. Procter keeps exact words for ideas memorably or surprisingly expressed.
- Paraphrase and summarise with the source closed. California State University San Marcos (2026) advises closing the book, writing your version, then checking it against the source for accuracy and borrowed wording. Howard (1992) suggested an hour between reading and writing.
- Mark a paraphrase as a paraphrase, as the San Marcos page suggests, so you still credit the author when it reaches your essay.
- Write your own thinking under its own mark: questions, objections, links to other sources.
- Keep one idea to a note, labelled with its topic, so notes can be regrouped by theme (Procter, n.d.).
- Finish each source with a summary of the whole, two or three sentences, without opening it. If you cannot, you have mined sentences rather than read a source.
Which note formats keep quotation, paraphrase and your own thinking apart?
Any format that gives each kind of note its own place. The university pages offer three.
A Cornell page set up for reading
The Cornell method's page, a cue column, a note column and a summary strip, is best known from lectures; its history is in how to take notes in lectures. The Australian National University (n.d.) adapts it for reading. The note column records what the author argues, with what reasons and evidence. The cue column holds your critique: how valid the methods are, how strong the evidence is, how the work fits other research, what to find out next. The strip takes a summary.
The University of Sheffield (n.d.) writes the cue words after reading, then covers the note column and summarises from the cues alone. Against patchwriting, that is the layout's value: your thinking has its own column, and the summary comes from your cues, not the source's sentences.
Source cards and a master list
Procter (n.d.) puts each idea on its own card or sheet, labelled by topic, author and page, with full details kept once in the master list, and warns against an essay that is "a patchwork of borrowed ideas". California State University San Marcos (2026) writes the source on the back of each card instead. In a notes app, one note per idea with the source and page in its first line does the same job.
A three-column note for one source
This one is ours: a document per source, headed by its full reference, with three columns. The first holds the source's words in quotation marks, with the page; the second, your paraphrase or summary, written with the source closed; the third, your own thinking. A copied phrase has nowhere to hide. On paper, marks in the margin work as well, as reading a book for an essay shows. Across many sources, a synthesis matrix turns notes into themes (how to integrate sources).
Where the guides disagree
Procter (n.d.) wants notes that mostly summarise, and calls paraphrasing word by word a waste of time. California State University San Marcos (2026) says it is better to copy the exact words than to paraphrase closely, because later you will not remember which words were whose. Both guard against the half-paraphrase. Our reading: summarise by default, and when you cannot yet put a passage in your own words, copy it exactly, in quotation marks, rather than tinker with it.
What kinds of note are there, and what is each for?
Eight kinds cover note-taking for essays from sources. The marks are ours.
| Note | Mark | What it is for | What it must carry |
|---|---|---|---|
| Source record | At the top | Every citation and reference written from these notes | The full reference, built in Cite a source from the DOI or ISBN |
| Quotation | Q | Wording you may analyse or quote | Exact words in quotation marks, and the page |
| Paraphrase | P | One passage's idea, in your words and structure | The page; written with the source closed |
| Passage summary | S | The point of a section, at half its length or less | The page range |
| Whole-source summary | Sum | Proof that you read and understood the whole | Two or three sentences, from memory |
| Your own thinking | Me | Questions, objections, links: your argument starting | Nothing borrowed, or a citation for what is |
| Secondhand | 2nd | A source your source cites, unread by you | Both sources; read the original before citing it |
| Follow-up | ? | Something to check, find or define | What to look for |
The passage summary follows Howard et al. (2010), who counted a summary only when it covered a paragraph or more and cut it by at least half. Why a secondhand note is a reminder, not a citation, is in I cited a source I did not read.
A worked example: our notes on one source
Our notes for this guide on Howard et al. (2010): the source is real; the notes, marks and layout are ours.
Source record, built in Cite a source from the DOI, in APA 7:
Howard, R. M., Serviss, T., & Rodrigue, T. K. (2010). Writing from sources, writing from sentences. Writing & Pedagogy, 2(2), 177–192. https://doi.org/10.1558/wap.v2i2.177
Q, p. 181. A passage can be patchwritten "even when it is properly quoted and referenced".
P, p. 181. For this study, a summary had to cover at least a paragraph, in new wording, at no more than half the length.
2nd, p. 179. They report Roig (2001): 22% of psychology professors patchwrote when summarising complex text from an unfamiliar field. Not read; find it before citing.
Sum, paper closed. Eighteen students' papers, read against their sources, held paraphrase, copying and patchwriting but no summary. The authors argue that working from single sentences invites copying and never shows the writer understood the source.
Me. Most of our notes come from pages 181 and 182: are we doing what the 18 students did? Could we explain the method without reopening it?
? The Citation Project's page for this study says patchwriting was in all the papers; the article's findings say 16 of 18. Cite the article.
The same note, patchwritten
The abstract says that writing from single sentences "does not compel the writer to understand the source". A note written with the page open: doesn't force the writer to comprehend the source. Each change is a one-for-one synonym and the structure is untouched, the pattern Howard counted in 1986. Without quotation marks and a page, that note would enter an essay as your sentence. The summary above says the same thing in a structure of our own.
How does EdCitation keep a full reference with every note?
Cite a source is the best tool for the first row of every note, because it looks the source up in the publisher's record and never writes a reference itself, which no chatbot can promise. From a DOI, a title, a PubMed ID, an ISBN or a web address it builds the entry in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver, and screens the source for retraction. It is free, with no account.
What our two runs returned
On 2 October 2026, the DOI 10.1558/wap.v2i2.177 came back from Crossref's record as the source record above, marked not retracted, with the in-text form (Howard et al., 2010). The ISBN 9781439084465, the edition Cornell's own page names as the source of the Cornell method, came back from Open Library's record as:
Pauk, W., & Owens, R. J. Q. (2010). How to study in college (10th ed.). Cengage Learning.
In text: (Pauk & Owens, 2010). Cornell's page names the publisher as Wadsworth, the record Cengage Learning; when the two differ, the title page of your copy decides.
Keeping references, and finding a lost one
A free EdCitation account keeps what you cite in reference lists, each entry tagged (by essay, say) and filtered by tag, plus a reading list for sources not yet read, like the secondhand note above. Lists download as a Word document, BibTeX or RIS. If a note has lost its source, Find sources searches about 300 million published works by the claim a sentence needs to support.
Check plagiarism, on the draft
Quotation marks go missing in notes; look for them in the draft. Check plagiarism marks each passage of your text that matches published or web text, in place, with the source it matches, so a phrase that lost its quotation marks is found by you. The report is shown only to you. It is part of Pro, at $8 a month, and runs on credits, 240 a month with Pro; the cost is shown before a check runs, and a check that fails uses nothing. A match is a place to look again, not proof of anything.
EdCitation looks sources up and finds matching text; it never writes notes, paraphrases or summaries, so every sentence in your notes stays your own. The plans are on the pricing page.
Quick questions
What is patchwriting?
Patchwriting is copying a passage and then deleting words, changing the grammar or swapping in synonyms, so the result stays close to the source's language. Howard and colleagues found it in 16 of the 18 undergraduate research papers they studied.
Is patchwriting plagiarism?
MIT's handbook treats it as plagiarism even with a citation; Howard and the Citation Project call it a writing problem to be taught. Your university's policy decides, so fix it either way.
Should I copy quotes into my notes or paraphrase as I read?
Summarise or paraphrase with the source closed by default, and copy exact words only when the wording matters, in quotation marks with the page. Never write a half-paraphrase with the page open.
How do I take notes without plagiarising?
Record the full reference first, mark every note as quotation, paraphrase, summary or your own thinking, and write paraphrases with the source closed. EdCitation's free Cite a source builds the reference from a DOI or ISBN.
Can EdCitation write my notes or paraphrase a source for me?
No. EdCitation never writes any part of anyone's work. It builds each reference from the publisher's record, finds sources, and, with Pro, shows which passages of a draft match published or web text.
References
- Australian National University. (n.d.). Note-taking template. ANU Library Academic Skills. https://www.anu.edu.au/students/academic-skills/study-skills/note-taking/note-taking-template
- California State University San Marcos. (2026, August 20). Note taking. Plagiarism and Academic Integrity Tutorial. https://libguides.csusm.edu/academic_honesty/notetaking
- Howard, R. M. (1992). A plagiarism pentimento. Journal of Teaching Writing, 11(2), 233–246. https://journals.indianapolis.iu.edu/index.php/teachingwriting/article/view/1116
- Howard, R. M., Serviss, T., & Rodrigue, T. K. (2010). Writing from sources, writing from sentences. Writing & Pedagogy, 2(2), 177–192. https://doi.org/10.1558/wap.v2i2.177
- Jamieson, S., & Howard, R. M. (2013). Sentence-mining: Uncovering the amount of reading and reading comprehension in college writers' researched writing. In R. McClure & J. P. Purdy (Eds.), The new digital scholar: Exploring and enriching the research and writing practices of NextGen students (pp. 111–133). Information Today. https://sandrajamieson.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/jamieson-sandra-rebecca-moore-howard-newdigitalscholar-ch5.pdf
- Jamieson, S., & Howard, R. M. (2019). Rethinking the relationship between plagiarism and academic integrity. International Journal of Technologies in Higher Education, 16(2), 69–85. https://doi.org/10.18162/ritpu-2019-v16n2-07
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (n.d.). Avoiding plagiarism: Paraphrasing. Academic Integrity at MIT: A Handbook for Students. https://integrity.mit.edu/handbook/academic-writing/avoiding-plagiarism-paraphrasing
- Procter, M. (n.d.). Taking notes from research reading. Writing Advice, University of Toronto. https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/researching/notes-from-research/
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Learning Center. (n.d.). Taking notes while reading. https://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/taking-notes-while-reading/
- University of Sheffield. (n.d.). How to make notes. StudySkills@Sheffield. https://sheffield.ac.uk/study-skills/research/reading/make-notes