Rephrase the words of the reference document into your own words. Changing a few words in the sentences is not paraphrasing. You must write the information using your own thoughts and interpretation about the author's statement(s) for which you are referencing.
Mention the author's name in the first sentence of the paragraph you are paraphrasing. Include the author's name and place the year of the publication in parenthesis. For example, "According to Brown (1995), all children have the ability to learn." To cite more than one author, write the authors' names in alphabetical order and separate them with a colon. If your source has several authors, the first time you cite them, you must list them all. Afterwards, you list the first author followed by et al. for the remainder of the paper. For example, "Smith et al. (1995) were investigating ..."
Format the sentence with two authors by listing their last names and the date of the publication in parenthesis. For example, "According to Green and Grace (1995) all children have the ability to learn." You can also cite the authors by writing, "All children have the ability to learn (Green and Grace, 1995)."