An automatic essay paraphrasing system, written in JOVIAL, produces essay-like paraphrases of input texts written in a subset of English. The format and content of the essay paraphrase are controlled by an outline that is part of the input text. An individual sentence in the paraphrase may often reflect the content of several sentences in the input text. The system uses dependency rather than transformational criteria, and future versions of the system may come to resemble a dynamic implementation of a stratificational model of grammar