Many oft-cited style guides besides the APA Publication Manual, including the AP Stylebook, the NYT Manual, Fowler, The Guardian Style Guide, and Strunk & White, are curiously silent on the topic. Outlines are differentiated by style, the inclusion of prefixes, and specialized purpose. Outlines, especially those used within an outliner, can be used for planning, scheduling, and recording. White, Basil (1996) Developing Products and Their Rhetoric from a Single Hierarchical Model, 1996 Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Society for Technical Communication, 43, 223-224. Outlines are used for composition, summarization, and as a development and storage medium. By using ThoughtCo, you accept our, Understanding Organization in Composition and Speech, Best Practices for the Most Effective Use of Paragraphs, 5 Easy Summarizing Strategies for Students, 5 Examples of How to Write a Good Descriptive Paragraph, Thesis: Definition and Examples in Composition, Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia, M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester, B.A., English, State University of New York. The Outline of Knowledge from the 15th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica is an example of this. A sentence outline summarizes each idea in a complete sentence that may become the topic sentence for a paragraph in the rough draft. This is where the subject or topic is introduced. Another alternative scheme repeats all five levels with a single parenthesis for the second five – I) A) 1) a) i) – and then again with a double parenthesis for the third five – (I) (A) (1) (a) (i). Some call the Roman numerals "A-heads" (for "A-level headings"), the upper-case letters, "B-heads", and so on. A special kind of outline (integrated outline) incorporates scholarly sources into the outline before the writing begins.[16]. When loaded into an outliner, an outline may be collapsed or expanded to display as few or as many levels as desired. Similar to section numbers, an outline prefix is a label (usually alphanumeric or numeric) placed at the beginning of an outline entry to assist in referring to it. Textual information is contained in discrete sections called "nodes", which are arranged according to their topic-subtopic (parent-child) relationships, sort of like the members of a family tree. An outline is a plan for or a summary of a writing project or speech. Outlines are differentiated by style, the inclusion of prefixes, and specialized purpose. This page was last edited on 15 October 2020, at 09:10. So, the ninth sub-item (letter-I) of the first item (Roman-I) is item I. I., and only the top level one is item I. ", – Steven Lynn, "Rhetoric and Composition: An Introduction. Matter and Energy", "1.1 Atoms", "1.1.1. It may also be included as part of a larger course synopsis. An outliner (or "outline processor") is a specialized type of word processor used to view, create, build, modify, and maintain outlines. Shields and Rangarajan (2013) recommend that new scholars develop a system to do this. Many outlines include a numerical or alphanumerical prefix preceding each entry in the outline, to provide a specific path for each item, to aid in referring to and discussing the entries listed. A reverse outline is an outline made from an existing work. Ideally, you should follow the four suggestions presented here to create an effective outline. Components of an Essay. When completed the integrated outline contains the relevant scholarly sources (author's last name, publication year, page number if quote) for each section in the outline. Professors often hand out to their students at the beginning of a term, a summary of the subjects to be covered throughout the course in the form of a topic outline. Some teachers ask students to submit formal outlines with their papers. One side effect of the use of both Roman numerals and uppercase letters in all of these styles of outlining is that in most alphabets, "I." Part of the system should contain a systematic way to take notes on the scholarly sources. An outline without prefixes is called a "bare outline". Topic outlines list the subtopics of a subject, arranged in levels, and while they can be used to plan a composition, they are most often used as a summary, such as in the form of a table of contents or the topic list in a college course's syllabus. Propædia had three levels, 10 "Parts" at the top level, 41 "Divisions" at the middle level and 167 "Sections" at the bottom level, numbered, for example, "1. Outlines are further differentiated by the index prefixing used, or lack thereof. If an organizational level in an outline is to be sub-divided, it shall have at least two subcategories, as advised by major style manuals in current use. Each outline consists of three main parts the Introduction, the Body, and the Conclusion. An outline, also called a hierarchical outline, is a list arranged to show hierarchical relationships and is a type of tree structure. Garson (2002) distinguishes a 'standard outline', presented as a regular table of contents from a refined tree-like 'hierarchical outline', stating that "such an outline might be appropriate, for instance, when the purpose is taxonomic (placing observed phenomena into an exhaustive set of categories). [2][3][4][5][6] An outline may be used as a drafting tool of a document, or as a summary of the content of a document or of the knowledge in an entire field. The prefix is in the form of Roman numerals for the top level, upper-case letters (in the alphabet of the language being used) for the next level, Arabic numerals for the next level, and then lowercase letters for the next level. Outliners are used for storing and retrieving textual information, with terms, phrases, sentences, or paragraphs attached to a tree. An integrated outline is generally prepared after the scholar has collected, read and mastered the literature that will be used in the research paper. This way the scholar reviews all of the literature before the writing begins. A feature included in many outlines is prefixing. [12] These notes can then be tied to the paper through the integrated outline. The first draft can be written using smaller blocks of time.[13]. This is usually not problematic because lower level items are usually referred to hierarchically. Some writers also prefer to insert a blank line between the A-heads and B-heads, while often keeping the B-heads and C-heads together. The body. Outlines are also used to summarize talking points for a speech or lecture. For further levels, the order is started over again. The scheme recommended by the MLA Handbook,[8] and the Purdue Online Writing Lab,[9] among others, uses the usual five levels, as described above, then repeats the Arabic numerals and lower-case letter surrounded by parentheses (round brackets) – I.