Paraphrasing (or rephrasing) is a writing technique that refers to restating an existing
idea in one’s own wording without changing the context. This writing technique has
various benefits, such as improving clarity and showing an understanding of the text.
And one of those benefits is increasing the text’s readability.
Yes, you’ve read it right—paraphrasing can increase your content’s readability. And
we’ll prove this claim here using various examples. So, let’s begin.
How Can Paraphrasing Improve Content Readability?
Paraphrasing is a complex technique because it needs a thorough understanding of the
source material and good writing skills. But that’s not it, as you will also need to master
various strategies to rephrase the content. Some of those strategies are as follows:
Synonym replacement.
Sentence restructuring.
Active to passive or passive to active conversion.
Conversion among multiple forms of conditional sentences.
So, in order to demonstrate how paraphrasing can improve content readability, we’ll
take assistance from all of the strategies mentioned above. And we’ll use a different
example with each strategy. This way, you will better understand the various
dimensions of text rephrasing in improving content’s readability.
Synonym Replacement
As the name depicts, this rephrasing strategy will replace the words with their
appropriate synonyms while ensuring the context remains the same. So, in order to implement this paraphrasing strategy to improve content’s readability, we’ll take assistance from a text with bad readability. And here is that text:
As you can observe from the above ‘Sample Paragraph,’ the sentences are complex and the overall language is overly verbose. These things make it challenging for readers to understand this paragraph’s intent. So, let’s paraphrase the above ‘Sample Paragraph.’ And for that, you can either rely on your vocabulary skills or use a paraphrasing tool online. That’s because most paraphrasing tools use synonymizing as their default rephrasing strategy. So, whichever way you want to paraphrase the above ‘Sample Paragraph,’ it is up to you.
Upon finding the synonyms for the difficult words of the above ‘Sample Paragraph’ and using them appropriately, here is how the rephrased version will look like:
As you can see in the above picture, the rephrased text now looks a lot readable. So, that’s how the synonymizing or vocabulary enhancement strategy of paraphrasing can enhance content readability.
Sentence Restructuring
When people hear about sentence restructuring, they often think about changing the voice of sentences, which is true. But the true meaning of this rephrasing strategy resides within its name— ‘sentence’ and ‘restructuring.’ Therefore, we’ll modify the order of clauses and words in this strategy. And we’ll use the output of the previous strategy as a sample text in this one. But first, let’s check its readability.
Since the output of the previous strategy looks readable, it’s essential to perform a readability check on that text. So, upon running the rephrased output from the first strategy into a readability checker, we’ve got the following results:
Now, let’s paraphrase the text shown in the above picture. And for that, we’ll restructure its sentences without modifying the context. So, here is the output we’ve got:
Now, let’s perform the same readability test and check the above output’s readability. So, upon checking the readability, we’ve got the following result:
As you can see, the readability score has improved from 21 to 25.6. So, it means that this rephrasing strategy has improved the content readability.
Passive to Active or Active to Passive Conversion
Generally, passive-to-active conversion mostly increases the text’s readability. And since all the sentences in the examples used in the above two strategies are active voices, we can’t implement this paraphrasing strategy. Therefore, for this strategy, we’ll use another example.
Note: Active-to-passive voice conversion only increases the text’s readability if the text has some ambiguity. And since there is no ambiguity in the examples used in the above two strategies, we can’t implement the passive-to-active conversion strategy.
For this strategy, we’ll use the following text sample:
Sample Sentence: The novel was written by a renowned author, and it was published last year. (Passive Voice)
And here is the readability score of this ‘Sample Sentence’:
Upon paraphrasing the ‘Sample Sentence’ by changing its voice, here is how the output of this rephrasing strategy will look like:
Paraphrased Form: A renowned author wrote the novel, and it got published last year. (Active Voice)
And here is the readability score of this ‘Paraphrased Form’:
As you can see, changing the voice of sentences has slightly improved the content’s readability. So, that’s how this rephrasing strategy can improve your text’s readability.
Conversion Among Multiple Forms of Conditional Sentences
Like the previous rephrasing strategy, this one is also subjective to increasing readability because it only works for conditional sentences. And since there are no conditional sentences in the examples used in the above two strategies, we’ll have to use a new example here.
For this strategy, we’ll use the following conditional sentence:
Sample Conditional Sentence: Had you studied diligently, your exam results would have been excellent.
And here is the readability score of this ‘Sample Conditional Sentence’:
Upon rephrasing it by changing the form of its conditional sentence, we’ve got the following result:
Paraphrased Form: If you had studied diligently, you would have excelled in your exams.
And here is the readability score of this ‘Paraphrased Form’:
As you can see, conversion from one conditional sentence to another without changing the context can also result in improved readability. So, that’s another way how paraphrasing can improve content’s readability.
Conclusion
As you have seen from the above discussion, you can elevate your content’s readability by mastering the art of paraphrasing. This means that whether your content has complex sentences or overly verbose language, you can simplify it by implementing the appropriate rephrasing strategy. And simplifying the content will eventually increase its availability to a broader audience.
But this benefit of paraphrasing will only be helpful if you know how to rephrase the content correctly. So, first work on mastering the art of paraphrasing before moving on to increase your content’s readability through it.