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How to Rewrite Articles? Rewrite Techniques

How to rewrite articles? What is a rewrite? Rewrite techniques.

What is a rewrite?

There are many ways one can rewrite an article. Before proceeding, first let us understand what the rewrite is and why an article requires a rewrite.

Everyone knows what an article is. It is generally a brief informational writing about a subject that can be anything under the sun. An internet article is generally 300-500 words. In the rewrite parlance this article is called the original article, written by a writer after researching the subject or from personal experience.

Rewrite means writing a new article which is similar in meaning but different in wording to the original article. There is no research required, so it is considered an easy job. That is why payment is also less for a rewrite, about $1-$2 for a 300-500 word article compared to the payment of $2-$5 for a fresh original article of the same words.

What is the purpose of rewriting an original article?

Why not just copy and paste the original article at another place? The reason is that Big Brother is watching with a stick in hand. And his name is Google! Suppose I own a website and sell water heater through that site. Now I find out that my competitor ‘ABC’ has some good articles about water heaters on its website. I decide to copy some of the text from there and place it on my site. Now, this is very easy to do but there would be trouble.

It is not only the fact that I copied an original copyrighted material, but this open theft will also be noticed by Google. My website would be penalized by Google for publishing duplicate content. Google and many software companies like Copyscape have software that can detect a duplicate content anywhere on the internet, even though there are billions of pages on the net! And if my webpage does not appear in the search engine results when someone searches for the term ‘water heater’ then my business would be limited severely.

But there is a supreme power which can never be overtaken by Google, doogle or any software company. The name of this supreme power is Human Mind. And the answer this mind has come up is ‘rewrite’.

Technically a rewrite is an illegal work. The original article writer or owner is not being paid. However, many original article owners also need several rewrites of the same article. They place the rewrites in various article directories and other sites on the web, from where they get the backlinks to a central website. Backlinks are very important to rank higher in search enging results.

How to rewrite an article?

There are many different ways to rewrite an article. The original article is already present. So no research is required. Most of the rewrite jobs require simple rewording of the original article. Basically it means changing the wording of the original without losing the original meaning or facts.




This product is available in different sizes and colors.


One can find this product in a wide range of colors and sizes.


Rule No. 1: Facts cannot be changed

These facts include the name of the person, institution, product or service. Things like measurement detail, keywords and any particular term specific to the subject of the article can not be changed.




LCD monitors from Sony are available in 15”, 17”, 22” and 24” sizes .

Rewrite (wrong):

Such a monitor can be found in the sizes of 15” and above.

(Note: It missed three facts – LCD, Sony and the specific sizes.)

Rewrite (correct):

(1) Monitors from Sony in the LCD variety can be found in 15”-24” range.

(2) Sony offers LCD monitors in the range of 15″-24″.

(3) Sony LCD monitors are available in 24”, 22”, 17” and 15” sizes.


Rule No. 2: Do Not Change the Number of Paragraphs

While it is not necessary, the writer should try to maintain the number of paragraphs present in the original. Some of the standard style sheets require a certain number of paragraphs. If the client specifies otherwise or the number of words required for a rewrite is less than what is present in the original, only then one should try to change the number of paragraphs.

Rule No. 3: It Is All about Keywords

Internet articles are all about keywords, which defines the main subject of the article. A person wanting to be an internet article writer needs to know all the rules related to the placement of keywords in the article or rewrite.

A rewrite can be done by rewording the original article sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph or in other ways. The main aim is to ensure that less than three contiguous words similar to the original article are present in the rewrite. If you can maintain less than 2 words contiguous in the rewrite, the better. The term ‘contiguous’ is used not only for the words in the same sentence but also for the previous and the next sentences. In this, common words like ‘this’, ‘is’, ‘in’, ‘the’, etc are not counted, but even though words like ‘used’, ‘device’, ‘select’ seem common, these are counted. Different form of the same word can be used with great effect in a rewrite. Like if the word ‘common’ is present in the original then in the rewrite the word ‘commonly’ can be used without any problem. Synonyms are also used extensively in the rewrites.

A rewrite increases the chance of changing the original meaning. By simple changes in the placement of one or more words, the meaning of a sentence can be altered drastically, for better or worse. Writers need to be careful about this while using any of the rewriting techniques.

Simple rules of writing an original article also apply here. Like there should not be spelling and grammar mistakes, it should be legible, etc.


Rewrite Example:


Sentence by sentence rewrite technique:

Modems, routers and server console parts are the different types of devices that can be connected to serial switch boxes. The user can select manual or automatic control options. However, compared to the automatic ones, the manual boxes cost less. More than a single device can be connected to the manual boxes.

Paragraph by paragraph rewrite technique:

There are automatic serial switch boxes that are expensive while the manual boxes are cheaper. These switch boxes can be connected to different devices like routers, console parts of the server and modems. It is possible to connect more than one device with the manual boxes.


If the rewrite appears like this –  “……. routers and modems. These are automatically or manually controlled…..”, then the red flag will come up because the main words ‘routers’, ‘modems’, ‘automatically’, ‘manually’ and ‘controlled’ are coming up very close to each other and in the same contiguous order as present in the original text.

Another Example:



Running a large, medium or small company does not matter in this. Different strategies and SEO applications can be used effectively even by freelancers to enhance their job finding prospects. The purpose of Search Engine Optimization or the SEO is to get maximum traffic to blogs or websites. For this reason, website owners who want more and continuous visitors to their blog or website of the company should make effective use of SEO.


From the reader’s perspective, a rewrite is a bad proposition because they get same information from different articles. It wastes their time and does not provide any value addition. That is why a rewrite carries negative connotation. However, from the product or service providers point of view it is a very effective tool to get the consumers. No one knows where a person searching online might stumble upon the company’s products or services. The visibility of the provider increases when it has internet presence at several places. In this, a rewrite proves a cheaper option compared to hiring a writer to write a fresh and original article.

There is no way that a proper rewrite can be done by any software. The task will always require a human, to come out with a rewrite that is logical and legible.


Working at (TCA) for last four months I have written more than 500 rewrites. Four of which were rejected by the publishers (the clients who place rewrite jobs at the site). The first one was rejected because I did not maintain the keyword density as specified by the publisher. The rest cited poor grammar, missing prepositions or some paragraphs being illegible. So, if you find any grammar error in this article you need to read it correctly.


Update: 25 June, 2011

Well, the data now reads 1,300 rewrites done by me at and I just received my 5th rejection yesterday where the client cited ESL issue. The choice of improving the rejected rewrite was present but I opted out of this job because I do not think grammar can be improved in next few minutes. A rejection on grammar issue means the improved article by the same writer is going to be rejected again.

Update: 29 Oct, 2011

Well, I was dropped by TCA from Tier level 2 to Tier level 1. There was one more rejection a few months back. The site editor reviewed some of my articles and found them to be containing grammar and spelling mistakes. So the site decided to drop my Tier level.

Sometime back TCA decided to allow only Tier 2 and higher level writers to have access to rewrite jobs because the site was receiving complaints about poor quality of the rewritten articles. All this means I can no longer work on rewrites.

Recently I came to know about I joined it and find that I am able to make a little bit more money than what I was making at TCA. Besides, in the last few months, the number of available jobs at TCA went down. That forced me to look for another writing site. So presently I am working only at iWriter.

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