APA guidelines: Paraphrasing

You use a paraphrase when you want to preserve the meaning of the original text without copying the text verbatim (see quotation).

A paraphrase is representing the ideas of others in one's own words.

A paraphrase is announced or followed by a narrative or parenthetical citation to the original work. 

• The source reference for a paraphrase consists of author's surname and the publication year in parentheses.
• Citing the page number is not mandatory, but is recommended when referring to a specific passage.

If you do not name the author(s) in the text then the citation after the paraphrase will appear as follows:

• one author:

• two authors - use ampersand (&) between the two names:

• three and more authors - use the Latin et al.

If you cite the author(s) in the text, it is not necessary to repeat the name(s) in the parentheses. The source reference will look like this:

• one author:

• two authors - in the text use the word 'and' between the names instead of an ampersand 

• three and more authors - use the Latin 'et al.':

To support an argument or hypothesis, you can refer to several publications at once. 

In this case, the authors are arranged alphabetically and separated by a semicolon " ; "