Writing Tips and Tricks : Outlining Your Paper

A good outline is important because:

It will help you stay organized and focused throughout the writing process and help ensure proper coherence in your final paper. It is important that the outline should be viewed as a guide, not a straightjacket. As you review literature and gather data, the organization of your paper may change; adjust your outline accordingly. 

An outline helps you organize multiple ideas about a topic. Most research problems can be analyzed from a variety of perspectives; an outline can help you sort out which modes of analysis are most appropriate to ensure the most robust findings are discovered. 

A clear, detailed outline ensures that you always have something to help re-calibrate your writing should you feel yourself drifting into subject areas unrelated to the research problem. 

Content by the research guide "Organizing your Social Sciences Research Paper," at the University of Southern California.

A strong outline details each topic and subtopic in your paper, organizing these points so that they build your argument toward an evidence-based conclusion. Writing an outline will also help you focus on the task at hand and avoid unnecessary tangents, logical fallacies, and underdeveloped paragraphs.

Step 1. Identify the Research Problem.

The research problem is the focal point from which the rest of the outline flows. Try to sum up the point of your paper in one sentence or phrase. It also can be key to deciding what the title of your paper should be.

Step 2. Identify the Main Categories. 

What main points will you analyze? The introduction describes all of your main points; the rest of your paper can be spent developing those points. 

Step 3. Create the First Category. 

What is the first point you want to cover? If the paper centers around a complicated term, a definition can be a good place to start. For a paper that concerns the application and testing of a particular theory, giving the general background on the theory can be a good place to begin. 

Step 4. Create Subcategories.

After you have followed these steps, create points under it that provide support for the main point. The number of categories that you use depends on the amount of information that you are trying to cover. There is no right or wrong number to use. 

Once you have developed the basic outline of your paper, organize the contents to match the standard format of a research paper as described in this guide.

Content by the research guide "Organizing your Social Sciences Research Paper," at the University of Southern California.

A reverse outline can help you:

Determine if your paper meets its goal

Discover places to expand on your evidence or analysis

See where readers might be tripped up by your organization or structure

How to create a reverse outline

1. Start with a complete draft to have a fuller picture of the plan you carried out. You can use a partial draft to review the organization of the paragraphs you have written so far.

2. Construct the outline by listing the main idea of each paragraph in your draft in a blank document. If a paragraph's topic sentence provides a clear version of the paragraph's argument, you can paste that sentence into the outline as a summary for that paragraph. Otherwise, write a one-sentence summary to express the main point of the paragraph

3. Number your list for ease of reference.

Content from this section originally by the University of Wisconsin - Madison's guide "Reverse Outlines" by the Writing Center.

There are two general approaches to take when writing an outline for your paper:

A topic outline consists of short phrases. It is useful when you are dealing with a number of different issues that could be arranged in a variety of different ways in your paper. This method creates better content from which to build your paper.

A sentence outline is done in full sentences. It is useful when your paper focuses on complex issues in detail. It is also useful because sentences themselves have many of the details in them needed to build a paper and it allows you to include those details in the sentences instead of having to create an outline of short phrases that goes on page after page. 

Content by the research guide "Organizing your Social Sciences Research Paper," at the University of Southern California.