Outlining

Outlining

Some students love to outline; others want to go forth without an outline. Most everyone’s had experience with outlining and has a pretty good clue about the self’s writing style.

When a paper is longer, outlining may help you lay out where you’re going with it. Outlining can keep you from getting lost as you forget where you were headed and can keep you directed. Long papers may veer off the central topic. Outlining can help to keep you focused.

Remember that some professors require outlines for papers – and they are an enormous boon for both speeches and PowerPoint presentations, so you want to have a good handle on how to put an excellent outline together.

Begin here:

Title: rough-out of topic



Think of up at least three main subjects that you will discuss about this topic.

Create your thesis statement.

Now you are ready to begin your outline.

Use Roman numerals for your main subjects. Use uppercase letters to indicate your subtopics, and then go further with numbers, and then further with lower case letters. (If you still need another subdivision, you can go to lowercase Roman numerals.) If you use an A, then you need a B, if not a C and D, too. This is true for the numbers and lower case letters as well.

It will look something like this:

Title

I.

A.

1.

2.