Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Research Paper Outline
Research Paper Outline
Research Paper Outline
The Outline
Making an Outline
Writing an outline in addition to the paper
may seem like a lot of extra work,
especially if your teacher doesn't require
one. If you take the time to think about
what you want to say and to put your ideas
into an outline, writing the actual paper will
be easier. An outline is a listing of brief
ideas that will be in the paper.
Four Main Components for Effective
Outlines
Parallelism
Coordination
Subordination
Division
Parallelism
How do I accomplish this?
Copyright ©1995-2008 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/544/02/
Alphanumeric outlines
An alphanumeric outline uses Roman
numerals, capitalized letters, Arabic
numerals, and lowercase letters, in that
order. Each numeral or letter is followed
by a period, and each item is capitalized:
Sample alphanumeric outline
Thesis statement: E-mail and internet monitoring; is it really an
invasion of the employees' rights in the workplace?
I. Why do 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 the employees privacy right’s when it comes to EM/S
(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.
Note that each category above has at
least two subcategories.
"Outline." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 21 Oct 2008, 21:24 UTC. 22 Oct 2008
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Outline&oldid=246808930>.
BASIC OUTLINE FORM
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
IMPORTANT!!!
It is up to the writer to decide on how
many main ideas and supporting ideas
adequately describe the subject.
http://www.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/research/outlining.html
Outlines provide a summary
showing the logical flow of a paper.
They are useful because:
help the writer organize their thoughts before getting
bogged down in word choice and sentence
structure;
show which ideas need illustration or elaboration;
and
help the writer decide on an organizational
technique for the report, whether it be logical,
chronological, or categorical in nature.
Preparing and Using Outlines
Using an outline can help you organize your
material and can also help you discover
connections between pieces of information that
you weren't aware of when you first conceived
the plan of your paper.