Outlining

Trying to devise a structure for your essay can be one

of the most difficult parts of the writing process.
Making a detailed outline before you begin writing is a
good way to make sure your ideas come across in a
clear and logical order. A good outline will also save
you time in the revision process, reducing the
possibility that your ideas will need to be rearranged
once you've written them.
The First Steps
Before you can begin outlining, you need to have a
sense of what you will argue in the essay. From your
analysis and close readings of primary and/or
secondary sources you should have notes, ideas, and
possible quotes to cite as evidence. Let's say you are
writing about the 1999 Republican Primary and you
want to prove that each candidate's financial resources
were the most important element in the race. At this
point, your notes probably lack much coherent order.
Most likely, your ideas are still in the order in which
they occurred to you; your notes and possible quotes
probably still adhere to the chronology of the sources
you've examined. Your goal is to rearrange your ideas,
notes, and quotesthe raw material of your essay
into an order that best supports your argument, not
the arguments you've read in other people's works. To
do this, you have to group your notes into categories
and then arrange these categories in a logical order.
Generalizing
The first step is to look over each individual piece of
information that you've written and assign it to a
general category. Ask yourself, "If I were to file this in a

database, what would I file it under?" If, using the

example of the Republican Primary, you wrote down an
observation about John McCain's views on health care,
you might list it under the general category of "Health
care policy." As you go through your notes, try to reuse
categories whenever possible. Your

goal is to reduce your notes to no more than a page of

category listings.
Now examine your category headings. Do any seem
repetitive? Do any go together? "McCain's expenditure
on ads" and "Bush's expenditure on ads," while not
exactly repetitive, could easily combine into a more
general category like "Candidates'
Expenditures on ads." Also, keep an eye out for
categories that no longer seem to relate to your
argument. Individual pieces of information that at first
seemed important can begin to appear irrelevant when
grouped into a general category.
Now it's time to generalize again. Examine all your
categories and look for common themes. Go through
each category and ask yourself, "If I were to place this
piece of information in a file cabinet, what would I
label that cabinet?" Again, try to reuse labels as often
as possible: "Health Care," "Foreign Policy," and
"Immigration" can all be contained under "Policy
Initiatives." Make these larger categories as general as
possible so that there are no more than three or four
for a 7-10 page paper.
Ordering
With your notes grouped into generalized categories,
the process of ordering them should be easier. To
begin, look at your most general categories. With your

thesis in mind, try to find a way that the labels might

be arranged in a sentence or two that supports your
argument. Let's say your thesis is that financial
resources played the most important role in the 1999
Republican Primary. Your four most general categories
are "Policy Initiatives," "Financial Resources," "Voters'
Concerns," and "Voters' Loyalty." You might come up
with the following sentence: Although McCain's policy
initiatives were closest to the voters' concerns; Bush's
financial resources won the voters' loyalty. This
sentence should reveal the order of your most general
categories. You will begin with an examination of
McCain's and Bush's views on important issues and
compare them to the voters' top concerns. Then you'll
look at both candidates' financial resources and show
how Bush could win voters' loyalty through effective
use of his resources, despite his less popular policy
ideas.
With your most general categories in order, you now
must order the smaller categories. To do so, arrange
each smaller category into a sentence or two that will
support the more general sentence you've just
devised. Under the category of "Financial Resources,"
for instance, you might have the smaller categories of
"Ad Expenditure," "Campaign Contributions" and
"Fundraising." A sentence that supports your general
argument might read: "Bush's early emphasis on
fundraising led to greater campaign contributions,
allowing him to have greater ad expenditure than
McCain."
The final step of the outlining process is to repeat this
procedure on the smallest level, with the original notes
that you took for your essay. To order what probably
was an unwieldy and disorganized set of information at
the beginning of this process, you need now only think
of a sentence or two to support your general

argument. Under the category "Fundraising," for

example, you might have quotes about each
candidate's estimation of its importance, statistics
about the amount of time each candidate spent
fundraising, and an idea about how the importance of
fundraising never can be overestimated. Sentences to
support your general argument might read: "No
candidate has ever raised too much money [your
idea]. While both McCain and Bush acknowledged the
importance of fundraising [your quotes], the numbers
clearly point to Bush as the superior fundraiser [your
statistics]." The arrangement of your ideas, quotes,
and statistics now should come naturally.

Putting It All Together

With these sentences, you have essentially
constructed an outline for your essay. The most
general ideas, which you organized in your first
sentence, constitute the essay's sections. They follow
the order
in which you placed them in your sentence. The order
of the smaller categories within each larger category
(determined by your secondary sentences) indicates
the order of the paragraphs within each section.
Finally, your last set of sentences about your specific
notes should show the order of the sentences within
each paragraph. An outline for the essay about the
1999 Republican Primary (showing only the sections
worked out here) would look something like this:
I. POLICY INITIATIVES
II. VOTERS CONCERNS
III. FINANCIAL RESOURCES
A. Fundraising

a. Original Idea
b. McCain Quote/Bush Quote
c. McCain Statistics/Bush Statistics
B. Campaign Contributions
C. Ad Expenditure
IV. VOTERS LOYALTY

A topic outline is a hierarchical outline composed of

topics. Each entry is a subtopic of the subject of the
outline. One application of topic outlines is the college
course overview, provided by professors to their
students, to describe the scope of the course. Another
application is as a subject outline, such as for an
encyclopedia.

Outlines with prefixes

A feature included in many outlines is prefixing. Similar
to section numbers, an outline prefix is a label (usually
alphanumeric or numeric) placed at the beginning of
an outline entry to assist in referring to it.
Copyright 2000, David Kornhaber, for the Writing Center at Harvard
University

Types of Outlines

Bare outlines
Bare outlines include no prefix.

Sentence outline
A sentence outline is a hierarchical outline composed
of sentences. Each includes a heading or single
sentence of a planned document about the subject of
the outline. It is the type of outline typically used to
plan the composition of books, stories, and essays. It
can also be used as a publishing format, in which the
outline itself is the end product.

Topic outline

Alphanumeric outline
An alphanumeric outline includes a prefix at the
beginning of each topic as a reference aid. The prefix
is in the form of Roman numerals for the top
level, upper-case letters (in the alphabet of the
language being used) for the next level, Arabic
numerals for the next level, and then lowercase letters
for the next level. For further levels, the order is
started over again. Each numeral or letter is followed

by a period, and each item is capitalized, as in the

following sample:
Thesis statement: E-mail and internet monitoring, as
currently practiced, is an invasion of employees' rights
in the workplace.
I. The situation: Over 80% of today's companies
monitor their employees.
A. To prevent fraudulent activities, theft, and other
workplace related violations.
B. To more efficiently monitor employee productivity.
C. To prevent any legal liabilities due to harassing or
offensive communications.
II. What are employees' privacy rights when it comes
to electronic monitoring and surveillance in the
workplace?
A. American employees have basically no legal
protection from mean and snooping bosses.
1. There are no federal or State laws protecting
employees.
2. Employees may assert privacy protection for their
own personal effects.
B. Most managers believe that there is no right to
privacy in the workplace.

1. Workplace communications should be about work;

anything else is a misuse of company equipment and
company time
2. Employers have a right to prevent misuse by
monitoring employee communications
Some call the Roman numerals "A-heads" (for "A-level
headings"), the upper-case letters, "B-heads", and so
on. Some writers also prefer to insert a blank line
between the A-heads and B-heads, while often keeping
the B-heads and C-heads together.
If more levels of outline are needed, lower-case Roman
numerals and numbers and lower-case letters,
sometimes with single and double parenthesis can be
used, although the exact order is not well defined, and
usage varies widely.
The scheme recommended by the MLA Handbook,
[7]
and the Purdue Online Writing Lab,[8] among others,
uses the usual five levels, as described above, then
repeats the Arabic numerals and lower-case letter
surrounded by parentheses (round brackets) I. A. 1.
a. i. (1) (a) and does not specify any lower levels, [7]
[8]
though "(i)" is usually next. In common practice,
lower levels yet are usually Arabic numerals and lowercase letters again, and sometimes lower-case Roman
again, with single parentheses 1) a) i) but usage
varies. MLA style is sometimes incorrectly referred to
as APA style,[9] but the APA Publication Manual does
not address outline formatting at all.

A very different style recommended by The Chicago

Manual of Style,[1][10] based on the practice of
the United States Congress in drafting legislation,
suggests the following sequence, from the top to the
seventh level (the only ones specified): I. A. 1. a) (1)
(a) i) capital Roman numerals with a period, capital
letters with a period, Arabic numerals with a period,
italic lowercase letters with a single parenthesis,
Arabic numerals with a double parenthesis, italic
lowercase letters with a double parenthesis, and italic
lowercase Roman numerals with a single parentheses,
though the italics are not required). Because of its use
in the US Code and other US law books, Many
American lawyers consequently use this outline
format.

third sub-sub-item of the fourth sub-item of the second

item is item II. D. 3. So, the ninth sub-item (letter-I) of
the first item (Roman-I) is item I. I., and only the top
level one is item I.

Another alternative scheme repeats all five levels with

a single parenthesis for the second five I) A) 1) a) i)
and then again with a double parenthesis for the third
five (I) (A) (1) (a) (i).[citation needed]

1.2 Corporate environment

Many oft-cited style guides besides the APA Publication

Manual, including the AP Stylebook, the NYT
Manual, Fowler, The Guardian Style Guide, and Strunk
& White, are curiously silent on the topic.

2.1.1 Traffic

One side effect of the use of both Roman numerals and

upper-case letters in all of these styles of outlining is
that, in most alphabets, "I." may be an item at both
the top (A-head) and second (B-head) levels. This is
usually not problematic, because lower level items are
usually referred to hierarchically. For example, the

Decimal outline
The decimal outline format has the advantage of
showing how every item at every level relates to the
whole, as shown in the following sample outline:
Thesis statement: --1.0 Introduction
1.1 Brief history of Liz Claiborne

2.0 Career opportunities

2.1 Operations management

2.1.2 International trade and corporate customs

2.1.3 Distribution
2.2 Product development

Integrated Outline

An integrated outline is a helpful step in the process of

organizing and writing a scholarly paper (literature
review, research paper, thesis or dissertation). When
completed the integrated outline contains the relevant
scholarly sources (author's last name, publication year,
page number if quote) for each section in the outline.
An integrated outline is generally prepared after the
scholar has collected, read and mastered the literature
that will be used in the research paper. Shields and
Rangarajan (2013) recommend that new scholars
develop a system to do this. Part of the system should
contain a systematic way to take notes on the
scholarly sources.[11] These notes can then be tied to
the paper through the integrated outline. This way the
scholar reviews all of the literature before the writing
begins.
An integrated outline can be a helpful tool for people
with writer's block because the content of the paper is
organized and identified prior to writing. The structure
and content is combined and the author can write a
small section at a time. The process is less
overwhelming because it can be separated into
manageable chunks. The first draft can be written
using smaller blocks of time. [12]

BASIC OUTLINE FORM

Below is a synopsis of the outline form. The main ideas
take roman numerals. Sub-points under each main
idea take capital letters and are indented. Sub-points

under the capital letters, if any, take italic numbers

and are further indented.
I. MAIN IDEA
A. Subsidiary idea or supporting idea to I
B. Subsidiary idea or supporting idea to I
1. Subsidiary idea to B
2. Subsidiary idea to B
a) Subsidiary idea to 2
b) Subsidiary idea to 2
II. MAIN IDEA
A. Subsidiary or supporting idea to II
B. Subsidiary idea to II
C. Subsidiary idea to II
III. MAIN IDEA
It is up to the writer to decide on how many main ideas
and supporting ideas adequately describe the subject.
However, if there is a I in the outline, there has to be a
II; if there is an A, there has to be a B; if there is a 1,
there has to be a 2, and so forth.

OUTLINING EXAMPLE
Suppose you are outlining a speech on AIDS, and these
are some of the ideas you feel should be included:
AZT, Transmittal, AIDS babies, Teenagers, Safe sex,
Epidemic numbers, Research.

To put these ideas into outline form, decide first on the

main encompassing ideas. These might be: I.
Transmittal, II. Societal Consequences, III. Research.
Next, decide where the rest of the important ideas fit
in. Are they part of AIDS transmittal or AIDS societal
consequences or AIDS research solutions? The
complete outline might look like this:
Major Aspects of Aids
I. Transmittal of AIDS
A. Transfusions
B. Body fluids
1. Sexual
2. Non-sexual
II. Societal Consequences of AIDS
A. Epidemic disease pattern

1. Teenagers
2. Women
3. Homosexuals
B. AIDS babies
C. Increased homophobia
D. Overburdened health care
III. Research Solutions to AIDS
A. AZT
B. HIV virus
C. Other viruses
It is only possible to make an outline if you have
familiarity with the subject. Not only in the initial
outline, but during the course of the research, the
writer may find it necessary to add, subtract or change
the position of various ideas. This is acceptable as long
as the logical relationship among ideas is preserved.