How To Make a Traditional Outline
Outlines are useful as a way of thinking about and organizing a paper. They are a formal system of writing down ideas to see how these ideas are connected with one another, and what order to put them in: which might come first, which second, and so on. It is a guide to tell the writerwhere to go next.
There are two different kinds of outlines, the topic outline and the sentence outline. The topic outline consists of short phrases. It is useful when you are dealing with a number of different issues which could be arranged in a variety of ways in your paper.
In contrast, the sentence outline is written infull sentences. It is used when your paper focuses on complex details. The sentence outline is useful for this kind of paper because sentences themselves have many of the details in them and a sentence outline allows you to include them in theoutline without having to create a long outline that goes on page after page.
There is no rule as to which outline is best, topic or sentence. Use the one that seems to best cover your material and topic, but whichever one you choose, use it throughout your outline. That is, do not make some categories topic and others sentence—stay withone or the other for the entire outline.
Both topic and sentence outlines follow very rigid formats. The traditional format uses Roman (I,II,III…) and Arabic (1,2,3…) numerals, along with capital and small letters of the alphabet. This is the kind of outline most commonly used for classroom papers and speeches.
Making the Outline
To make an outline for a paper, first decide on your topic or title. For example, if I were making an outline for this handout, my topic or title would be “How to Make an Outline”. Next, type “Thesis Statement”: and then the thesis for your paper which is the main ideas of your paper. It should answer your topic question, and in one sentence, tell the reader what you will cover in your paper. The thesis statement for this paper would be “a traditional outline, whether topic or sentence, can help a writer organize ideas and information before writing his or her paper”.
Do NOT put “Introduction” or “conclusion” on your outline!
Now, decide what you are going to talk about first. In this handout, the first thing I do is tell what outlines are, so that would be my first subtopic. Once I’ve identified a subtopic, I look to see if it can be broken down more. The identification section of the handout is very brief, and since I don’t have much to say here, I can’t really break it down, so I leave this and go onto my next general category, in which I talk about how outlines are used. I have more to say here, and so I break it down into smaller units noting the three uses of the outline that I intend to write about. In my fourth category (IV) I have even more to say, so I break it down even further.
Note that the number of subtopics and categories you use depends only on the amount of information that you are going to cover- there is no right or wrong number to use. List as many as needed to indicate what you are going to write about and the order in which you are going to write.
As a rule, each category must consist of a minimum of two entries. In other words, if your first category is Roman numeral I, your outline must also have a category labeled Roman numeral II: If you have a capital letter A under category I, you must also have a capital letter B. Whether or not you then go on to have a capital letter C,D,E, and so on is up to you and depends on the amount of material you are going to cover. You are only required to have two of each numbered or lettered categories.
- Subtopic 1
A.
B.
1.
2.
a.
b.
- Subtopic 2
Roman numerals – remember these rules
I=1,V=5,X=10
If the I is in front of the V or X subtract: IV (1-5=4) IX (1-10=9)
If the I is after the V or X add: VII (5+2=7) XI (10+1=11)
Everything in your outline should be double spaced and most word processing programs can autoformat the outline for you. Once I’ve done everything, my completed topic outline should look like the one on the next page.