Paraphrasing versus Plagiarizing

Everyone knows that it is wrong to present someone else's words as your own. Buying a term paper, copying a lab from files secretly kept in the dorm, or inserting large chunks from an article into a research paper without acknowledgement constitute acts of stealing. Those who intentionally plagiarize know they are being dishonest. But there are other ways in which student writers can plagiarize unsuspectingly. Inadvertent plagiarism can result from sloppy note-taking or simply not understanding what plagiarism is. One widely practiced form of plagiarism that students are often not aware of results when the words you have written and the ideas you have presented follow too closely the structure and expression of a source you have used. Student researchers need to be aware that there are acceptable and unacceptable paraphrasing practices, and that paraphrasing of an unacceptable sort constitutes a form of plagiarism.

Here, by way of illustration, is a source quotation:

The military institution has been criticized continually for preparing to fight the last war, and, in many ways, this is understandable because of its conservative nature and abhorrence of change. There is, after all, a certain degree of comfort, if not logic, in maintaining doctrine, equipment, tactics, and procedures that have proven successful in combat operations.
Lieutenant-Colonel Bernd Horn, "Complexity Squared: Operating in the Future Battlespace," Canadian Military Journal 4.3, Autumn 2003, 7.

Below is one unacceptable paraphrase of the source quotation as it might appear in a student essay:

The military has long been accused of preparing to fight the last war, which is a reasonable allegation given the inherent conservatism of the military institution and its aversion to change. At the same time, there is good logic in maintaining doctrine, equipment, tactics, and procedures that have proven effective in the past (Horn 7).

Phrases in italics are as they appear in the original and are similarly positioned in the paraphrased sentences. There is no acknowledgement of direct quotation. You can see that the underlined words and phrases are merely synonyms—words and phrases with the same or similar meaning—that have replaced the original terms: long been accused for criticized continually; aversion to change for abhorrence of change. Moreover, the structure and overall wording of each sentence is evidently patterned after the original. Even though the writer has acknowledged the source of the paraphrase, borrowing the structure of Horn's sentences and the ordering of his ideas is in itself a form of plagiarism.

Below is an acceptable paraphrase of the original passage:

The common judgment that the military is forever "preparing to fight the last war" is a valid diagnosis given the military's natural preference for procedures and equipment that have been effective in the past (Horn 7).

Here the original has been digested and its ideas properly represented without regurgitating how they were said. Although the wording and organization have for the most part changed, the sense of Horn's original statement remains the same and the source is duly documented. The phrase "preparing to fight the last war," though perhaps a cliché, is taken directly from Horn's article and therefore must be placed in quotation marks.

An honest paraphrase restates the idea of the source material in an entirely new form using original sentence structure and word choice. Taking the basic structure of the source sentences and substituting a few synonyms is in fact a form of plagiarism.