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Outlining helps to organize thoughts and create a sense of refined structure to written texts. By following these simple steps, you can clearly define your main ideas and figure out how to support your claims.

How to start an outline

1. Brainstorm
   1. Think about all of your ideas and what you would like to do with them. Write or draw them out and see if you can find a connection between these ideas.
2. Limit your ideas
   1. Find a connection that links similar ideas together from your brainstorming session; this will help you develop your main theme or topic. A connection can be a common theme, argument, or philosophy. Try to limit these like-ideas to very specific narrow subjects.
      
      Example: Rates of Crime
      This is too broad, so a specific idea within crime rates can limit this idea
      
      Example: Crime rates in homicide cases
      This topic is more specific, but could use more parameters to make it more focused.
      
      Example: Homicide crime rates in Unicorn Town
      This topic is the most specific topic, talking about a limited idea in criminology in a single place.
      
      
3. Develop a claim
   1. Take the key words from your main ideas and form your claim or argument. Don’t forget to check your claim for any vague vocabulary/ideas!
      
      Example: The rates of crime changed from 2010 to 2018 in Unicorn Town.
      What type of crime is happening? How did the crime rates change; did they increase or decrease? “Rates of crime” and “changed” are vague words and should be described with more detail.
      
      Example: The rate of homicide-related crime increased by 12% between 2010 and 2018 in Unicron Town.
      
      
4. Collect supporting material
   1. Find important quotes or facts utilized resources that relate to your main ideas.

What belongs in an outline?

Typically, outlines include your main ideas, claim, and supporting materials. Outlines can help you check if all of your ideas relate directly to your purpose.

• Claim: Jeffrey Pilcher’s Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food argues that the authenticity of tacos can be questioned by its Mexican-American origins.
  • Main Idea: Tacos are typically seen as food from Mexico, but they were popularized in the United States.
    • Supporting Information: According to Pilcher (2012), authenticity is defined by having a direct origin to a place. U.S. influence on the popularization of tacos takes away from the authenticity of a taco.

Topic outline

A topic outline is designed to outline the structure of an entire paper and briefly touches upon the ideas you want to include in your paper.

Bullet point system:

This system allows you to trace the outline of your paper and allows for mobility if you decide to move you ideas around later. This will also help you to refine your essay’s content so your ideas connect directly with your claim. The main components of a topic outline consist of the following:

1. Claim– this is your main argument, thesis, or main idea
2. Main ideas– make sure this directly relates to your claim. These ideas are main themes/philosophies/subjects that support or refute your claim
3. Supporting information– quotes/details/facts
4. Elaboration– explains why the supporting information is relevant to your claim

A topic outline can be structured like the following:

1. Introduction
   1. Background information
      1. Introduce main ideas
   2. Claim
2. Main Idea
   1. Supporting information
      1. Elaboration
   2. Supporting information
      1. Elaboration into a transition
3. Conclusion
   1. Wrap up loose ends, answer your question, talk about further research

Note: This Roman numeral system can be changed to an Arabic numeral system, bullet points, or a symbol system. This is a truncated outline model; in college level writing, typically there is more than one main idea that is elaborated upon.

Sentence outline

A sentence outline helps with paragraph structuring, where full sentences are written out under main topic sentences.

Notecard Technique: Write down one sentence idea per notecard. Organize the notecards in an order that makes sense to you. This can be chronological, in a stream of consciousness, or any other order you want! By using this technique, you can physically switch sentences between each other until your sentences make sense together.

Reference

Pilcher, J. M. (n.d.). Planet Taco : A Global History of Mexican Food. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/knowledgecenter/detail.action?docID=1015305

Contributed by: Cameo Flores