Paraphrased material borrows someone else's ideas and presents them in your own words, but the paraphrase still requires the in-text citation, according to APA (or MLA) style. Paraphrasing is not a method of changing a few words or substituting synonyms to call the words your own, even though the ideas are not your own.

To summarize an article, reduce the text to its major findings in one or two sentences. The summary is a generalization concerning the major point the article makes or determines the reason the article was written.

Summaries are used most often as introductory elements to research writing critiques or as the foundation to longer research projects (thesis or dissertation) as literature reviews. Literature reviews are important to the viability of major research undertakings in that they establish the history of previously completed research, therefore establishing your work in the line of necessary research.