Plagiarism

A quote is identical to the original. You must use quotation marks around the quoted text. It must match the text word for word and give credit to the original author.

You generally only should use quoted text when it is exactly what you need it to say to get your point across. 

Paraphrasing is when you put something in your own words, but the idea comes from someone else. The paraphrase is roughly the same length as the original text.

Paraphrasing does not mean simply changing a word or two around from the original. You should use your own words entirely.

Original quote: "Students frequently overuse direct quotation in taking notes, and as a result they overuse quotations in the final [research] paper. Probably only about 10% of your final manuscript should appear as directly quoted matter. Therefore, you should strive to limit the amount of exact transcribing of source materials while taking notes." Lester, James D. Writing Research Papers. 2nd ed. (1976): 46-47.

 A legitimate paraphrase: In research papers students often quote excessively, failing to keep quoted material down to a desirable level. Since the problem usually originates during note taking, it is essential to minimize the material recorded verbatim (Lester 46-47).

 A plagiarized version: Students often use too many direct quotations when they take notes, resulting in too many of them in the final research paper. In fact, probably only about 10% of the final copy should consist of directly quoted material. So it is important to limit the amount of source material copied while taking notes.

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Original Quote: "Not taking medications leads to high rates of hospitalization, high hospital costs, and low quality of life."