Lesson 8.05: Creating Your Outline

Look through all of your notes to see if you can trace out a map of your paper.

An outline is a formal way used to organize your paper; it’s nothing more than a map for your paper that tells you where you are starting, where you are going, and where you will stop. Once you establish your main points, determine if you need to gather more information. Remove any information that you do not plan to use. Don’t discard anything yet, though!

There are two kinds of outlines: a fragmented outline and a sentence outline. A fragmented outline is also known as a topic outline. This type of outline lists words or phrases that you will mention in your paper. The only difference in a sentence outline is that it includes exactly what you will say about each topic. You write in complete sentences on every line. You can choose which to complete. Both, however, follow formats that use Roman and Arabic numerals along with capital and small letters of the alphabet.

An outline is crucial to a good paper, and it will make your life much easier as you begin to write. You have already determined the purpose of your paper, the audience reading your paper, and the thesis of your paper. Now that you have all this done, there are only a few more steps to creating your outline.

→ »

Fullscreen version

« »

There are a few more things to remember before you get started!

1. Keep your topics parallel! In the example you looked at on the previous tab, the writer used nouns; therefore, he or she followed with nouns through the entire outline. The writer also used single words or very short phrases, instead of complete sentences. A sentence outline would work, but each topic and subtopic would have to be written in complete sentences in order to keep it parallel.

2. Outlines are typically written in present tense. For example, if you were writing your outline using verbs, instead of nouns (as seen before), your verbs should be in present tense verbsIn the example below, look at the words INTRODUCING, Defining, and Explaining..

I. INTRODUCING SPAMMING

A. Defining Spamming
B. Explaining the History

3. There are some grammar rules you should follow.

• For all first level headers, use all upper-case letters.
• For secondary headers, use upper and lower case letters.

I. INTRODUCING SPAMMING - first level header

A. Defining Spamming - secondary header
B. Explaining the History - secondary header

« ←