Academic writing often requires students to integrate information found in source material.  There are various ways to do this: quotations, summaries, or paraphrases. 

Paraphrasing is:

• A detailed restatement of a source's main ideas in your own words.
• Not your opinions or interpretations of those ideas.

When incorporating a paraphrase into your writing, you must provide a citation, just as you would for a direct quotation. Even though you are writing in your own words, you are paraphrasing someone else's ideas. The ideas are not your own.