6 Vital Tips to Rewrite Content Without Facing Plagiarism
Rewriting content allows writers to portray the ideas of other people in their own wording. It gives them greater freedom in expressing their thoughts, and many times rewriting text makes it easier to read and understand as well.
However, there is a small chance that whatever you write or rewrite can coincidentally end up being similar to existing material. This is consumeristic as plagiarism or duplication.
But, there are ways to avoid that. A very easy method is to simply rely on a rewriter tool that uses AI. Or you can follow these six tips to rewrite text on your own.
6 Ways of Rewriting Without Plagiarizing
These are a few rewriting tips and techniques that will help you change your text significantly enough so that no plagiarism occurs.
However, do note that these methods are only applicable if your content is discussing “widely known” information that does not need to be credited. If you use content that can be attributed to a source, then you need to provide a citation as well.
- Use Synonyms to Replace Words
This is the simplest rewriting technique. It is not very effective at avoiding plagiarism on its own, but if you use it in tandem with other techniques, it becomes much more effective.
“Synonym replacement” simply refers to picking out words from the given text and then replacing them with their contextually correct synonyms. Depending on how many words you replace, the text could change very little or quite significantly. Typically, an AI article rewriter tool is very good at picking out a moderate number of words to rewrite.
If you are not confident in your vocabulary, then you can delegate this task to a rewriting tool. Using tools guarantees a certain quality level as well.
An example of using synonym replacement is as follows:
“That guy is amazing; he broke a rock with his bare hands”
“That person is remarkable; he destroyed a rock with his bare hands”
- Modify the Sentence Structure
Modifying the sentence structure means changing the positions of the parts of speech in a sentence. Typically, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives are the ones that get moved around.
Changes in the sentence structure can modify the given text quite significantly. However, it is not enough to use this technique alone if you wish to avoid plagiarism. In that scenario, you need to augment it with “Synonym replacement” for extremely thorough rewriting.
An example of rewriting a sentence by changing its sentence structure is as follows:
“That guy is amazing; he broke that rock with his bare hands”
Rewritten with structure changes:
“With just his bare hands, that amazing guy broke that rock”
As you can see that the latter part of the sentence was switched with the former. “guy is amazing” was changed to “amazing guy” i.e. the adjective changed its place relative to the subject.
If we change the words with their synonyms as well, this sentence will become almost unrecognizable.
- Replace Active Voice with Passive and Passive with Active
Active voice is the preferred voice when writing. It makes your write-up look more confident and powerful. Passive voice, on the other hand, makes it look weak.
However, when it comes to rewriting, you have to use passive voice if you wish to significantly change the content.
In the active voice, verbs directly follow after the subject, and more focus is placed on the subject doing the action. Contrary to that, the passive voice places more emphasis on the object on which the action is being done. Sometimes, the subject may even vanish from the sentence if it is written in the passive voice.
Let’s see an example of this:
“He kicked the ball.” (Active Voice)
“The ball was kicked.” (Passive Voice)
In the active voice version, we can see that the verb “kicked” directly comes after the subject “he”, while the object “ball” is placed at the last.
But in the passive voice version, the object “ball” comes first, while the verb “kicked” comes last, and the subject “he” is removed.
So, as you can see, simply changing the active voice to passive or vice versa can significantly rewrite the sentence. You can supplement this technique with “synonym replacement” for more detailed rewriting.
- Convert Direct Speech to Indirect and Vice Versa
Sometimes, during writing, you may have to describe how something was said or done to prove your arguments. There are two ways of doing that in English:
- Using direct speech
- Using indirect speech
Direct speech refers to recounting the events exactly as they happened. If you are recounting another person’s words, then you will write them verbatim using quotation marks.
On the other hand, indirect speech “reports” something that was happened or was said. The differences between direct and indirect speech are very easy to see with examples, so let’s look at a few of them.
Direct speech:
“I have bought a new car.”
“This cat is very adorable!”
“I am going to eat fish for dinner today.”
Indirect speech:
They said they bought a new car.
She said that the cat was very adorable.
He said he was going to eat fish for dinner today.
Direct and indirect speech can help in rewriting without facing plagiarism, but if you can utilize other techniques with it, the results can be even more enhanced. If you find it a little bit confusing, then you can always rely on a rewriting tool that uses AI as their results are quite reliable.
- Use Text to Replace Images and Vice Versa
Nobody said that you can only paraphrase text. You can also use your own words to explain what is being in an image.
Let’s say you are rewriting an article that uses some infographics instead of words and text to explain something.
You can look at the image, and after learning what it is trying to convey, you can use words to convey the same message. This is not always guaranteed to work, because some things cannot be explained without an accompanying image.
But if you do find the opportunity to use this technique, do it. The same is true for the opposite.
Let’s say you find some information that in your opinion can be displayed better as an image. In this case, you can simply use a graphic design software to create an image and put it in your content.
This way you can check plagiarism and avoid it very effectively.
- Change Numbers and Figures into Different Formats
This is quite an underrated tip for rewriting as most people don’t really think about “numbers” when they talk about “writing.” Basically, all you need to do is to write numbers in either text form or simply restate them in a way that is still true.
Let’s say you have a figure of “559” in your content, you can rewrite it as “five hundred and fifty-nine” instead. Alternatively, you can do the opposite as well. Meaning if a figure is written as “forty-three hundred,” you can restate it as “4,300.”
Decimal numbers, fractions, and percentages can be rewritten in different ways as well. For example, if you have a fraction of “¾” you can rewrite it as “75%”.
Similarly, “1/2” can be written as “half” or “50%”. If you have some percentages that do not fall into categories like half (50), a quarter (25), three quarters (75), or full (100), then you can use the following technique.
Let’s assume we have a figure of “79%” you can describe it as either “almost 80%,” or you can say “nearly three quarters.”
So, by changing how the figures look or describing them in a different manner, you can rewrite parts of your text effectively without facing plagiarism.
Conclusion
These were six tips to rewrite content without facing plagiarism. You can practice and apply these tips when rewriting content. Using combinations of these tips and techniques will enhance your rewriting and enable you to create very unique content that hasn’t been published anywhere else.
However, rewriting manually can be time-taking and exhausting. A good alternative to using these techniques is to utilize article rewriters that can do the same things, albeit much more efficiently.
