No matter what you’re writing, outlining is a crucial early step in the writing process. An outline provides the framework upon which your finished piece of writing is built; it provides the template to fill in with your unique insights and ideas.
- Mla Sentence Outline Example
- A Sentence Outline Begins With A Thesis Statement
- A Sentence Outline Uses Complete Sentences To Do What
The full sentence outline format is essentially the same as the Alphanumeric outline. The main difference (as the title suggests) is that full sentences are required at each level of the outline. This outline is most often used when preparing a traditional essay. Select the 'Sample Outlines' PDF in the Media Box above to download the sample of this outline. Decimal Outlines. A sentence outline lists complete sentences. Each sentence, instead of simply identifying a mini-topic, is like a mini-thesis statement about that mini-topic. It expresses the specific and complete idea that that section of the paper will cover as part of proving the overall thesis. The points and subpoints of an outline can then become the topic sentences for the paper's paragraphs. Additionally, because the topic sentence functions similarly at the paragraph level to the thesis at the essay level, you may also find it helpful to check out our thesis statement construction information.
Of the five steps of the writing process, outlining is part of the second: preparing. Whether you’re writing a lengthy research paper, a short essay, a blog post, or a presentation, outlining is a crucial practice that can save you lots of time later. It’s also a roadmap you can refer back to at later writing stages, particularly if you find your writing cruising off course or feel stuck in the mud and unsure of how to get rolling again.
Grammarly helps ensure your ideas are clear and organized
Why is outlining important?
Outlining is a way to organize your thoughts in a coherent, logical way. There’s a reason why it’s the next step after brainstorming: Imagine a brainstorm as a wild tornado of ideas whirling around in your head. You observe the storm, grab onto the most valuable ideas, then corral and organize them into a logical sequence that expresses your position and fits your assignment.
That logical sequence is your outline. It helps give your ideas structure and shape. Without a structure, your paragraphs would read more like a brainstorm than a polished draft—resembling more of a jumbled tornado than a coherent sequence that readers can follow.
In some cases, outlining is also a required part of your assignment. If you’re a professional writer creating a blog post or website content, your client might ask for an outline before you start writing so they can approve it or make changes. Similarly, a professor might require students to submit outlines before beginning research papers in order to confirm the students’ topics are appropriate for the course. Outlines show the professor that students are using credible sources, choosing appropriate topics, and aren’t trying to cram too much information into the allotted assignment length. Here, outlines help determine if a student needs to change direction before doing unnecessary work.
Remember, in any instance, you’re creating an outline for your own benefit. It’s an easy way to organize your writing plan before you actually start and a handy reference for if you get stuck.
What to include in your outline
Your outline should map out each section of your writing and include:
- Your thesis statement
- The topics you’re covering
- Each piece of supporting evidence for each topic
- Your conclusion
Under each section heading, jot down a few of the key points you plan to discuss there. You might also want to drop in links to the sources you plan on citing.
Types of outlines
There are a few different ways to label your outline. Two of the most widely used are topic outlines and sentence outlines.Both of these kinds of outlines are organized like bullet lists, which makes it easy to visualize a lot of information in just a few lines.
Topic outline
In a topic outline, you sketch out your writing using keywords and phrases. These keywords and phrases condense each section’s main idea into a quick, at-a-glance header. They don’t have to be your final headers, but they can be.
Here’s an example:
- Thesis: Adopting a mindfulness practice is one of the best ways to alleviate daily stress.
- Topic:Mindfulness reduces depression relapse risk
- Studies on depression relapse and mindfulness
- Topic: Mindfulness reduces chronic pain
- Studies on mindfulness reducing pain
- Studies on mindfulness and immune system
- Topic: Mindfulness therapy reduces stress and anxiety
- Studies on supporting mindfulness therapy reduces stress and anxiety
- Conclusion: Mindfulness is good for you—here’s why
See how the ideas are clearly organized here, but they’re each boiled down to a fragment?
Sentence outline
A sentence outline lists each section of the piece as a full sentence. These sentences aren’t necessarily your headers or the first sentence of each section. Instead, they’re sentences that describe the focal point of each section. For example, your sentence outline might look like:
- Thesis: Adopting a mindfulness practice is one of the best ways to alleviate daily stress.
- Topic:Mindfulness has been proven to significantly reduce an individual’s risk of relapsing into major depression.
- Multiple studies have indicated the link between mindfulness and a reduced risk of depression relapse.
- Topic: Mindfulness has been demonstrated to lessen chronic pain.
- The following studies have shown that daily mindfulness alleviates physical pain.
- In these studies, mindfulness improved practitioners’ immune systems.
- Topic: Mindfulness therapy can dramatically decrease stress and anxiety levels.
- Researchers pinpointed the link between mindfulness and stress reduction.
- These studies have shown the link between mindfulness and anxiety reduction.
- Conclusion: Making mindfulness part of your daily routine will reduce the amount of stress you feel, which in turn will yield numerous physical and mental health benefits.
One type of outline isn’t better than the other, so go with the one that helps you conceptualize your finished piece most clearly. Notice how both types follow the same structure: the thesis in the introductory section, followed by each body paragraph with its supporting data nested beneath.
Tips for easy outlining that make writing a breeze
Don’t try to make it perfect! Your outline is just a bare-bones version of your first draft that tells you what you need to cover and the order in which to make your points. As long as it’s clear and readable, your outline is good enough.
Familiarize yourself with the type of writing you’re doing before you start to outline. This way, you’ll know which structure to follow in your writing. For example, if you’ve been assigned a persuasive essay, read our guide on How to Write a Persuasive Essay to make sure you’re outlining and writing with the right goals in mind.
Although your outline is technically a reference document for you to use, you might have to go back and revise your outline after you’ve finished it, sometimes even after you’ve begun writing your first draft. This could be because:
- Your client/employer has a different plan for the content.
- Your professor determined your outline doesn’t fit the assignment or otherwise won’t work for a finished piece.
- As you wrote, you determined you need to address different points in your writing.
Treat your outline as a living document. If you need to go back and revise, go back and revise! Your outline exists to support your writing, so if your writing ends up going in a different direction than you’d originally planned, revise your outline so you don’t lose it as a reference.
Sometimes, it’s easiest to write your conclusion first and work backward from there. If you know where your writing is going to end up, but you’re not quite sure how you’ll get there, write your conclusion (or at least a few sentences you’ll flesh out later) and then create an outline that logically leads up to it.
>>Need help writing your conclusion? How to Write a Conclusion for an Essay
Ready for the next step in the writing process?
Mla Sentence Outline Example
Once your outline’s finished, you’re ready to start writing your first draft. Don’t worry about getting the tone just right or making sure your punctuation’s perfect—Grammarly can help with that. Just start building each point in your outline into a fully developed paragraph or two, and you’re on your way to an excellent piece of writing.
TOEIC | Business English | The Making Of Outlines. Part 3 |
When I was studying pharmacy at Troy, New York, my mother suffered from dyspepsia. She could not eat yeast bread, so I gave my attention to discovering a substitute. The result was my baking powder. I did not then contemplate its manufacture for sale, but in 1856 I began to make it in small quantities in my laboratory in Troy. I sold it only in bulk, and in a minor way, for several years; but the impression was growing on me that I had an article of real value in the household, and in 1861 I decided to go west where the opportunity would be better. I thought Chicago too big for my resources, so I selected Waukegan, Illinois.
I had $3,000 in cash, which had come to me through relatives. I rented a small building and began, for the first time, to make baking powder as a business. I was sure of my product, for it had proved itself countless times.
But against my own confidence was arrayed absolute indifference on the part of the public. My markets were wholly undeveloped, my name was unknown, and success was dependent on building up a desire for my product How to do this was the problem.
I reasoned that it was a case for demonstration. I would have to get people interested by showing them what my goods would do.
One day I put up a lot of samples in envelopes, each sufficient for one quart of flour, and went to Milwaukee. I visited all the hotels and left my samples with the cooks, without charge. Then I canvassed the principal grocery stores and distributed more samples, to be given away to customers. I talked with the grocers and told them that if they would follow the thing up, they would make money by it I explained the advantages of my product over the slow-rising yeast, and predicted a big demand as soon as housewives began to realize what it meant to them. Of course I did not dream, then, of the tremendous success that was to come, but I did feel sure of building a good business.
Within a few days I heard from the Milwaukee hotels. They wanted more of the baking powder. Orders from grocers followed speedily. Then I got out more samples, hiring men to distribute them. I began to circularize, too. I kept up both plans steadily, enlarging my sphere of action as the orders increased.
During the succeeding two years I made a little money, over operating and living expenses. Both of these items were extremely low. If I had not kept them down to bedrock, I could not have continued. I was resolved to keep the business within its income, no matter how low that income might be. But I continued pounding away at the trade and kept out of debt And all the time the orders increased.
In 1863 I decided that Chicago was the best field. The city, not the country, I had discovered, took most kindly to my article. So I moved my little plant there, and continued the same line of campaigns-samples, circulars, and personal solicitation. Five years elapsed before the business was established on a permanent and profitable basis.
Then, about 1868, I began advertising in the newspapers. I was cautious at first, though ultimately I spent three or four million dollars in space.
At the time I began to advertise, I had a partner who did not believe in this form of campaign. He thought it was throwing away money. As we could not agree, I bought him out To me, publicity had always seemed the logical way, provided it was consistent with the resources of the business itself. And newspaper space was merely an expansion of my circularization policy, on which I had largely built up the business. However, I did not believe in plunging. My great volume of publicity grew as the business grew. In my other and later enterprises - flavoring extracts and cereal foods - I have followed the same policy of working along the lines of least resistance. For example, if I found Texas the most susceptible to a campaign or product, I devoted my energies to Texas and left Chicago for a later period.
In 1891 I sold out for $1,500,000, but since then the consolidated companies have developed the field in an extraordinary manner, and have taken out of it in profits more in a year than I received for the business.
The underlying element in my success lay in having a product of real benefit to mankind, and in making the price low enough to be within the reach of rich and poor. My greatest obstacle was to convince people that my article really was a benefit. I would not have succeeded without confidence in my goods and patience and persistence, and a steadfast resolution to make every step pay for itself before I took another.
I believe that most men fail because they try to do too much. They are not satisfied to start in a small way, and to develop a business consistently. They begin with impossible expenses and a topheavy organization, and are swamped before they get their markets. And quite as important as anything, they are not content to live according to their business.
Note the good proportions of this narrative. Dr. Price is dealing with his start, not with his whole career. Another article on the same subject, written by David T. Abercrombie, is kept even more severely to the topic in hand. Mr. Abercrombie devotes two pages to his first year of business, and sums up his later career in a single sentence, thus: 'My business grew fast, and in a few years the mail orders alone amounted to $800 a day.'
Whether or not the paragraph shall correspond to a main division of your outline depends entirely on the proposed scale of treatment. Dr. Price's story is in fourteen paragraphs. Our outline for it had fourteen headings, though they do not exactly correspond to Dr. Price's divisions.
§ 15. Books divide into chapters; chapters into sections; sections into paragraphs. Articles divide into sections and paragraphs. Note two possible scales of treatment:
A book of forty thousand words. Chapter I (Definition Of Business English). Grain machinery: 10,000 words.
§1. binders ..............1,000
§ 2. reapers ..............2,000
§3. drills, seeders ........2,000
§ 4. fanning mills ..........2,000
§5. grain tanks ..........1,000
§6. wagons, racks ........2.000
An article of four thousand words.
§1. Gram machinery: ............1000
¶ 1. binders ................100
¶ 2. reapers .................200
¶3. drills, seeders..........200
¶4. fanning mills ..........200
¶ 5. grain tanks ............100
¶ 6. wagons, racks .........200
Chapter II. Corn machinery: 10,000 words.
§ 1. binders ..............4,000
§ 2. planters ..............2,000
§3. cultivators ...........3,000
§ 4. wagons, racks ........1,000
§ 2. Corn machinery: ..........1000
¶ 1. binders .................400
![Outline Outline](/uploads/1/3/7/6/137620657/953888669.jpg)
¶ 2. planters ...............200
¶ 3. cultivators ............300
¶ 4. wagons, racks .........100
Chapter III. Hay machinery: 10,000 words.
§1. mowers ..............2,000
§ 2. rakes ................2,000
§ 3. tedders...............2,000
§ 4. loaders ...............2,000
§5. ropes, forks ...........1,000
8 6. wagons, sleds ........1.000
§ 3. Hay machinery: ..........1006
¶ 1. mowers ...............200
¶ 2. rakes .................200
¶ 3. tedders ................200
¶ 4. loaders ................200
¶5. ropes, forks............100
¶6. wagons, sleds .........100
Chapter IV. All crop machinery: 10,-000 words.
§ 1. plows ................4,000
§ 2. harrows .............4,000
§ 3. discs .................2,000
§ 4. All crop machinery: ........1000
¶ 1. plows .................400
¶2. narrows ...............400
¶3. discs ..................200
There is a great advantage in making a sentence-outline. A mere word or phrase is vague, and it may lead to wandering. The sentence is definite, and will hold the writer to the point when he comes to expand it into a paragraph or a section. Besides, reducing vague thoughts to good sentences is mental analysis. It means pinning the writer down to his exact meaning. It enables him to see whether his outline hangs together.
A Sentence Outline Begins With A Thesis Statement
The substance, the main propositions of any argument must appear in the outline. See page 140.
Be convinced. Be persuaded that the vague nebula of your thought about a subject should be condensed into a system by the construction of a sentence-outline. It means hard work at the beginning. It is much easier to pick up the pen and let your sentences sprout and grow like the gadding vine. But unless you have previously organized your thought, the result will be nothing but leaves.
A good outline should be so well organized that if you cut it it will bleed.