# If you are given a passage of verse to paraphrase you must remember the following things.

# Verse has a regular measure or rhythm, but prose has not. In verse a poet says:

Whenever the moon and stars are set,
Whenever the wind is high,
All night long, in the dark and wet,
A man goes riding by.

But in prose we should say:

There is someone who rides about all night long when it is dark and wet and windy.

# To fill up the required number of syllables poetry often repeats things, but prose need not do that. You have an example in the passage above.

# Poetry often inverts the order of words, or the prose order of subject and predicate. In the above example the subject comes in the last line. In the prose paraphrase it comes at the beginning.

# Poetry often uses unfamiliar words, or older words, forms and expressions which are no longer in use. These should be changed for modern ones.

# Poetry is often very brief, and says in a line more than prose can. So sometimes in a paraphrase we have to expand a passage of verse in order to explain it.

If you are asked to paraphrase a passage of prose, remember the following things.

# Difficult words or sentences should be written in simpler language, such as you would use If you were telling your brother or sister the meaning.

# Direct speech can be put into indirect form, and indirect speech into direct.

# Figures of speech such as similes and metaphors can be turned into plain language.