Essays and Plagiarism

Writing Essays in Your Own Words

Learning to write using your own words is an important part of an academic education.

However, it is sometimes difficult to grasp exactly what ‘writing in your own words’ involves.

In order to help you in this task, you will find below some quick reference checklists identifying: what is meant by writing in your own words; why writing in your own words is important; and, how to ensure that you have written using your own words.

What is meant by ‘writing in your own words’?

Academic writing often involves summarising, synthesising, analysing or evaluating other people’s arguments.

To ‘write in your own words’ means to reflect on and digest such source material and then to discuss or redeploy this using your own vocabulary, appropriate references, and an argument that is structured to address the specific task in hand. .

As this implies, writing in your own words involves much more than changing an odd word or phrase from your source material.

As well as providing appropriate references, you should aim to use different vocabulary, delete superfluous points and adapt the structure of the argument to your own purposes (for example, to address the precise demands of an essay question).

In short, you should ‘make the material your own’.

It is acceptable to repeat some words or phrases, particularly where these are part of the technical vocabulary of the discipline.

If, for illustrative purposes, you need to provide a brief quotation, you should always use any necessary quotation marks or indentations (for text) and supply appropriate reference details.

Why is writing in your own words so important?

Putting ideas into your own words is part of the process of ‘internalising’ them or making them your own.

It will help clarify your understanding of these ideas, improve your ability to recall them in the future and enable you to deploy them in new contexts.

The ability to explain something using your own words demonstrates your understanding of it and will allow your tutor to award marks accordingly.

Using your own words demonstrates that your work is your own.

Claiming someone else’s work as your own is plagiarism and, if done deliberately, is a serious academic offence.