The Working Outline

A Working Outline helps to organize your material and allows you to make changes to your information as you progress. Discover possible connections between pieces of information that you may not have been aware of.

The process of outlining a research paper gives you:

An idea of how to organize your paper so there is a logical presentation of information

Help in identifying where information may be missing so that you can go back to the library and continue your research

Help in identifying whether your headings and subheadings are pertinent to your thesis or unrelated and not needed.

A strategy on which to base your research focus and time

An order in the presentation of your paper

Outlines can be organized according to your purposes such as a chronology of some historical development; a cause and effect relationship; the process by which something is accomplished; comparing and contrasting something; presenting both sides of an argument, etc.

A Working Outline can be an informal list of topics and subtopics you are thinking of covering in your paper. In developing the outline, try to bring related material together under general headings and arrange sections so they relate logically to each other. As you follow the format of a topic outline, you can use short phrases or a sentence in presenting your ideas.

Follow the MLA format for the descending parts outline:

This outline requires if you have an “A” in your paper, you need to have a “B”; a “1” requires a “2”, and so forth.

Preparing the Outline:

The time spent in outlining and arranging your material effectively will save you several hours of writing time and produce a more finished product. The following steps are recommended when constructing an outline:

Brainstorm ideas and approaches

Group together similar ideas

Delete information that is not relevant to your thesis

Create headings for main ideas

Place your ideas under headings in logical, chronological, spatial and/or sequential order

Place supporting detail under the main ideas

Place this material in an outline format

The Rules of Outlining:

download example

Every division requires at least two parts; an “A” requires a “B”; a “1” requires a “2”, etc.

Begin each topic and subtopic with a capital letter

Do not mix formats – either use phrases or sentences, not both

Indent the subtopic’s identifying number or letter so that it is placed directly under the first letter of the first word in the previous topic. Indent each subtopic so that all letters and numbers of the same kind will come directly under one another in a vertical line.

Do not follow topics with end punctuation if using phrase or topic outline

Use proper punctuation if using a sentence.