rephrases

Rephrase, as a verb, means to express something in different words while preserving the original meaning. The plural term rephrases refers to instances of such restatement or to passages that have been rewritten. In writing and editing, rephrasing is used to improve clarity, adapt tone, reduce redundancy, or tailor content to a specific audience. In linguistics and computer science, rephrase generation is a common task, often treated as paraphrase generation, and is foundational for applications in machine translation, text summarization, and dialogue systems.

Techniques used to rephrase include maintaining the core propositions while altering syntax, choosing synonyms with compatible register, and preserving references to people, places, and entities. Risks include distorting meaning, shifting nuance or tone, and introducing errors. Automatic rephrasing systems balance fluency with semantic equivalence, typically evaluated by human judges or automated metrics.

Common contexts include academic writing, journalism, language learning, and software localization. Examples: “The cat sat on the mat” can be rephrased as “The cat rested on the mat.” “A quick survey showed audience preference” can be paraphrased as “The survey indicated that the audience favored it.”

Relation to paraphrase: rephrase largely overlaps with paraphrase; some writers distinguish rephrasing as a stylistic reformulation rather than a substantive rewrite.

See also: paraphrase, restatement, editing, paraphrasing tools, natural language generation.