Accidental plagiarism is rarely dramatic. It is a paraphrase that stayed too close to the source, a quotation that lost its quotation marks somewhere in the notes, or an idea that felt like the writer's own by the third draft.
The fix is a small set of habits: knowing which of the three techniques you are using, citing every one of them, and writing your paraphrases from understanding rather than from the source's sentences.
The examples below are in APA 7, and the techniques are the same in every style. The awkward cases get as much space here as the easy ones: a source with no page numbers, a paraphrase that runs for a paragraph, and a similarity report nobody explained to you.
EdCitation will not write a paraphrase for you: it never writes, rewrites or paraphrases any part of a paper. It does the steps on either side of your own sentence. Find sources takes you back to the original, Cite a source builds the credit from the publisher's record, and Check plagiarism shows what still matches before you submit.
What is the difference between a paraphrase, a quotation and a summary?
A quotation repeats the source's exact words, a paraphrase restates one passage in your own words and sentence structure, and a summary gives only the main point of a longer piece. All three must be credited to the source.
| Technique | What it is | Length against the original | Use it when | APA 7 in-text citation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quotation | The source's words, exactly, inside quotation marks | The same, usually a short extract | The exact wording matters | Author, year and page number |
| Paraphrase | One passage restated in your words and your structure | About the same, or a little shorter | The idea matters, not the wording | Author and year; a page number is optional |
| Summary | The main point of a long passage, chapter or whole work | Much shorter | The reader needs the gist only | Author and year |
| All three | A credit, as well as the in-text citation | Not applicable | Every time | A reference list entry, built in Cite a source from the DOI or ISBN |
The balance between them is not a matter of taste. The American Psychological Association (2022b) observes that published authors paraphrase far more often than they quote, and tells student writers to do the same, because a paraphrase can be shaped to fit your argument while a quotation cannot.
A translation you make yourself is a paraphrase, not a quotation, because the words in your paper are yours. Copying an author's abstract is neither: it is the author's text, and it belongs in quotation marks or nowhere.
What do a paraphrase, a quotation and a summary look like in practice?
Here is one passage used four ways. The passage, its author and its page number are invented for this example, so do not cite Hartley: no such source exists.
Street trees cool a city in two ways. Their canopies shade pavements and walls, which would otherwise store heat through the day and release it at night. Their leaves also release water vapour, which draws heat from the surrounding air. The effect is local, however, and a single row of trees does little for the streets beyond it. (Hartley, 2021, p. 47)
The version that gets a student into trouble
Too close (patchwriting). City trees cool a town in two ways. Their canopies shade roads and walls, which would otherwise keep heat during the day and give it off at night. Their leaves also give off water vapour, which pulls heat from the nearby air (Hartley, 2021).
This has a citation and is still a problem. The sentences are Hartley's, in Hartley's order, with synonyms dropped in, and the wording is presented as the student's own. The American Psychological Association (2022c) names this pattern directly and notes that plagiarism-checking software is built to find it: a few words changed while the content stays largely the same.
The three versions that do not
A proper paraphrase. Hartley (2021) explained that trees lower street temperatures by blocking sunlight before hard surfaces can absorb it and by evaporating water through their leaves, although the benefit does not reach far beyond the planted street.
New structure, new wording, same meaning, and a citation.
A quotation. Hartley (2021) cautioned that the cooling effect "is local" and that "a single row of trees does little for the streets beyond it" (p. 47).
The exact words are in quotation marks, and the page number follows the quotation. In a parenthetical citation the same details sit together: (Hartley, 2021, p. 47).
A summary. Street trees cool their immediate surroundings through shade and evaporation (Hartley, 2021).
When should I quote instead of paraphrasing?
Quote when the exact words matter, and paraphrase the rest. The American Psychological Association (2022d) gives three cases for a direct quotation: reproducing an exact definition, repeating something an author put memorably or concisely, and responding to someone's precise wording. It also warns that instructors, programmes and publishers may set their own limits on quoted material, so the brief can overrule all three.
The mechanics in APA 7 are short and strict:
- Give the author, the year and the page number in the same sentence as the quotation, whatever form the citation takes.
- Under 40 words, keep the quotation inside your own sentence, in double quotation marks.
- At 40 words or more, set it as a block: a new line, the whole block indented 0.5 in. from the left margin, double-spaced, and no quotation marks.
- After a block quotation, put the citation after the final punctuation and add no full stop after the closing bracket.
- Use
p.for one page andpp.for a range, with an en dash: pp. 34–36. For pages that are not next to each other, use a comma: pp. 67, 72. - Do not add an ellipsis at the start or the end of a quotation unless the source itself has one.
Quoting a source that has no page numbers
Web pages, many ebooks and most reports give you nothing to put after p.. The American Psychological Association (2020) sets out the alternatives: name the heading or section, count the paragraphs and give a paragraph number, or give both together for a long section. For a video or a podcast, give the time stamp at which the quotation begins, and for a play, the act, scene and line. Kindle location numbers are specifically ruled out.
APA publishes separate guidance for a quotation that contains an error and for one with quotation marks of its own.
Does a paraphrase need a citation, and how often?
Yes, every paraphrase and every summary needs an in-text citation, because the idea is still someone else's. Putting it in your own words changes who wrote the sentence, not who had the thought.
In APA 7, cite a paraphrase with the author and year, in either the narrative form, Hartley (2021), or the parenthetical form, (Hartley, 2021). A page number is not required, though the American Psychological Association (2022b) suggests adding one where it would help a reader find the passage in a long or complex work such as a book.
How often to repeat the citation is the part students guess at. For a paraphrase that runs over several sentences, cite the work on first mention and do not repeat it while the context makes clear that the same source is still being discussed. Reintroduce the citation at the start of a new paragraph, and repeat it as soon as you bring in a second source or switch between them.
Citing the same source in every sentence is not the safe option. The American Psychological Association (2022a) calls that overcitation, and asks for one or two of the most representative sources for each key point, with literature reviews as the exception that carries more. Undercitation and overcitation are both errors, and only one of them is plagiarism.
How do I paraphrase without plagiarising?
Write from your understanding of the passage, with the source out of sight. Plagiarising by accident almost always starts the same way: the original is open on the screen and its sentences are being edited one at a time.
- Read the passage until you could explain it to a friend.
- Close the tab or turn the page over.
- Write the point from memory, in the way you would say it, for the purpose it serves in your essay.
- Now compare it with the original. Look for phrases of three or four words that came through unchanged, and for the same sentence order.
- Rewrite those parts, or, if a distinctive phrase has to stay, put it in quotation marks and add the page number.
- Add the citation at once, not later, and build the reference list entry at the same moment in Cite a source, which looks the work up in the publisher's record rather than writing it, as a chatbot would.
Those steps are a compressed version of the ones the Purdue Online Writing Lab (n.d.) sets out, and its last two are the ones people skip: mark any borrowed phrase with quotation marks in the notes, and record the page in the note itself, not in your memory.
What patchwriting is, and why a citation does not fix it
Patchwriting is the halfway house between quoting and paraphrasing, and the commonest way an honest student loses marks. The term comes from the composition scholar Rebecca Moore Howard, whose 1993 definition the English Language Institute at the University of Hawaii (n.d.) quotes: copying a passage, then cutting some words, changing the grammar, and dropping in "one-for-one synonym-substitutes".
A citation does not rescue it, because the citation credits the idea while the sentence still claims the wording. Software finds it because the word order survives the synonyms. Markers find it because the paragraph does not sound like the rest of the essay. Patchwriting as a deliberate first draft is a reasonable way to get a difficult passage down; it is only a problem when the draft is handed in.
What counts as common knowledge, and can I reuse my own work?
Common knowledge does not need a citation, and your own earlier work usually does need permission. Both are narrower than students expect.
The Harvard Guide to Using Sources (n.d.) draws the line at authorship rather than at how well known a fact is. Widely known facts and dates are common knowledge because no one person discovered them, and that holds even for facts only specialists would know: the date of an early academic appointment in a field is still nobody's private finding. What is never common knowledge is a conclusion someone reached through their own research, thought or analysis. An idea or an interpretation crosses over only when it is held almost universally in the field.
That test explains why a figure you found in five textbooks needs no citation while one researcher's estimate of the same figure does. Where you are unsure, cite it, and cite the source that shaped your thinking. The worst outcome is being told the citation was unnecessary. If you have lost track of where an idea came from, EdCitation's Find sources searches about 300 million published works by the claim a sentence needs to support, which is often the quickest way back to the original.
Reusing a paper you wrote last year
On reusing your own work, the American Psychological Association (2022c) defines self-plagiarism as presenting your own previously published work as new, and notes that some institutions treat handing the same paper in for two classes, without the current instructor's permission, as exactly that. Building on your earlier coursework in a thesis may well be allowed. The one thing you cannot do is decide by yourself.
How should I read a similarity report?
Read the matched passages, not the percentage. A similarity score is the share of your text that matches other text in a database, and it is not a plagiarism score.
Turnitin (n.d.) says this in its own student guide: it does not check for plagiarism, it compares a submission against its database and highlights matching text, and the score is simply matched words divided by total words. Correctly quoted and cited material still counts as a match. There is no fixed acceptable number, because every institution, instructor and assignment may expect something different. A high score does not always mean plagiarism, and a low score does not always mean there is none.
The colour bands are a reporting convenience, not a verdict:
| Colour | Matching text | What it actually tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Blue | No matching text | Often means no sources are being used at all |
| Green | 1% to 24% | The usual range for a cited essay. Read the matches anyway |
| Yellow | 25% to 49% | Look for long quoted blocks and an over-quoted paragraph |
| Orange | 50% to 74% | Very little of the text is yours. Rework before submitting |
| Red | 75% to 100% | Check first that you have not submitted the same paper twice |
Look at what matched. Quotations inside quotation marks, reference list entries and standard phrases are expected. What needs work is a long run of matched text outside quotation marks, or a paragraph matching one source phrase after phrase: patchwriting.
How can I check for matching text before I submit?
Run a check on the finished draft and read every match against the rules above. EdCitation's Check plagiarism is the best tool for this step, because it keeps the two jobs apart: it highlights each passage that matches text already published or on the web, names where the match was found, and leaves the rewriting to you. That is the right split for patchwriting in particular, the pattern APA says checking software is built to find (American Psychological Association, 2022c), since a tool that reworded the passage for you would hand you sentences that are no longer yours. The report is shown only to you.
Check plagiarism is part of Pro, at $8 a month, and runs on credits: Pro includes 240 a month and Max, at $24 a month, 720. Each check shows its cost before it runs, and a check that fails uses nothing. Find sources and Cite a source are free, with no account.
The judgement stays with you: EdCitation never writes, rewrites or paraphrases any part of a paper, and a percentage from any checker is not a verdict or proof of anything. Building each reference from the record with Cite a source is free; the in-text side of APA is in APA 7 in-text citations.
Quick questions
Do I need to cite a paraphrase?
Yes. A paraphrase restates someone else's idea, so it needs an in-text citation and a reference list entry even though the words are yours. In APA 7 that means the author and the year, and EdCitation's free Cite a source builds the matching entry from the source's DOI, ISBN or title.
Do I need a page number for a paraphrase in APA 7?
No. APA 7 requires a page number for a direct quotation only. For a paraphrase a page number is optional, and APA suggests adding one when it would help readers find the passage in a long or complex work.
Is changing a few words enough to avoid plagiarism?
No. Keeping the source's sentences and swapping in synonyms is called patchwriting, and it can be treated as plagiarism even with a citation. A real paraphrase changes the structure as well as the words.
How do I quote a web page with no page numbers?
Give the reader another way to find the passage: the heading or section name, a paragraph number that you have counted yourself, or both together. For a video, give the time stamp instead.
What similarity percentage is acceptable?
There is no universal figure. Turnitin's own student guide says there is no fixed number and that each institution, instructor or assignment may set its own expectation, so ask your instructor and read the matches themselves.
References
- American Psychological Association. (2020). Direct quotation of material without page numbers. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/quotations/no-page-numbers
- American Psychological Association. (2022a). Appropriate level of citation. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/appropriate-citation
- American Psychological Association. (2022b). Paraphrases. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/paraphrasing
- American Psychological Association. (2022c). Plagiarism. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/plagiarism
- American Psychological Association. (2022d). Quotations. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/quotations
- Harvard College Writing Program. (n.d.). The exception: Common knowledge. Harvard Guide to Using Sources. https://usingsources.fas.harvard.edu/exception-common-knowledge
- Purdue Online Writing Lab. (n.d.). Paraphrase: Write it in your own words. Purdue University. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/using_research/quoting_paraphrasing_and_summarizing/paraphrasing.html
- Turnitin. (n.d.). Understanding the similarity score for students. Turnitin Guides. https://guides.turnitin.com/hc/en-us/articles/23713493434253-Understanding-the-similarity-score-for-students
- University of Hawaii, English Language Institute. (n.d.). Patchwriting. https://www.hawaii.edu/eli/patchwriting/