Paraphrasing is when you, as the researcher, put a passage or idea from another work and into your own words. A paraphrased passage is generally shorter and more condensed than the original. Summarizing is very similar to paraphrasing, in that it also involves putting someone else’s ideas into your own words in order to condense the material (and to show that you understand the source material). A summary includes only the main points and/or ideas in a longer passage or entire work.
Paraphrasing in the preferred method when writing in the AMA style.
Example:
Raw food diets are a subset of vegan diets consisting of fruit, berries, vegetables, mushrooms, nuts, seeds, legumes, and cereals.2,4,7 Many variants of the raw food diet exist and there is no one definition.5 Some articles required that 40%-85% of an individual’s total dietary intake contain uncooked foods in order to be considered raw. High plant protein diets did include a small intake of meat products.2,3,8
