Patchwritingleaf

As defined in Standing on the Shoulders of Giants (Howard, 1999), patchwriting is when writers inadequately transform sourced material, either when summarizing or paraphrasing. Patchwriting is not a student-only process; it is seen as the natural process for manipulating sources, a sort of scaffolding. That scaffolding is invisible in most (not all) professional writing, but may be (but not always) evident in student writing.