This paper explores the phenomenon of "patchwriting," a term which Howard (1992) coined to refer to the practice of "copying from a source text and then deleting some words, altering grammatical structures, or plugging in one-for-one synonym substitutes" (p. 233). Although patchwriting in universities is often labeled simply as poor paraphrasing, and, by extension, as plagiarism, Howard (1992) suggested that patchwriting constitutes a developmental stage in mastering academic discourse. This paper reviews the literature on patchwriting in the university context. The findings in the literature demonstrate that patchwriting generally results from attempts to engage with new academic discourses. Therefore, universities must develop developmental responses to patchwriting that allow students to grow as writers