Paraphrasing vs. Summarizing: What’s the Difference?
The main difference between paraphrasing and summarizing is that paraphrasing involves restating information in your own words whereas summarizing involves condensing information into a shorter version.
Before we move to more differences, let’s first understand Paraphrasing and Summarizing:
- Paraphrasing: Paraphrasing involves restating a passage or text using different words while retaining the original meaning.
- Summarizing: Summarizing entails condensing the main ideas, concepts, and information from a longer piece of content into a shorter version.
Now, let’s get to Paraphrasing vs Summarizing:
Major differences between Paraphrasing and Summarizing
| Paraphrasing | Summarizing |
|---|---|
| Paraphrasing requires a deep understanding of the original text. | Summarizing requires the ability to identify the main points quickly. |
| Paraphrasing can be used to explain difficult concepts. | Summarizing is useful for giving an overview of a large amount of information. |
| Paraphrasing can be as long as the original text. | Summarizing is always shorter. |
| Paraphrasing retains the original sentence structure. | Summarizing uses a new structure to condense the information. |
| Paraphrasing can be done at the sentence level. | Summarizing requires looking at the bigger picture of the entire text. |
So, these are the main differences between the entities.
Also see:
You can see other “differences between…” posts by clicking here.
If you have a related query, kindly feel free to let me know in the comments below.
