D. Rewrite the author's idea in your own words in about the same length
Explanation:
In a paraphrase, you take something said or written by someone else and put it into your own words. By that definition, (A) is incorrect. When you "take an author's idea word for word from the text" you are plagiarizing, or stealing their idea. You should never plagiarize. Paraphrasing, however, is completely acceptable, as long as you cite your source and make sure to use different words and word structure than the original. That means (B) is also incorrect. Before we can know whether (C) is the right answer, we need to check (D). (D) defines the word paraphrase. It is the correct answer, which automatically makes (C) incorrect.
