The Sentence Outline

There are potentially as many different types of outlines as there are writers. That's because all an outline really has to be is some type of list, whether on a Word document or dinner napkin, that serves as a strategy for writing your first draft.

You Mean Like the Harvard Outline?
Most certainly not.  Producing a "Harvard Outline," with its perfect pattern of Roman numerals, capital letters and lower-case letters,  is tantamount to writing the paper itself. Such outlines can be helpful after the project is written. But few writers consider it a viable model for a working outline.

Then What Do You Suggest?
Anything that works. Simple as that. The more you write, the more you will know what type of outline best fits your needs for any given writing project, from a scratch list to an organized hierarchy of ideas and details.  However, when it comes to writing the basic academic response essay (often called the expository essay), there is a type of outline that can be helpful for this particular assignment: the "sentence outline."

The Sentence Outline Explained
A sentence outline usually consists of at least four sentences. Keep in mind that, depending on the length of the assignment, there could be more. The first sentence that you should write is your thesis statement—the sentence that contains your overall controlling idea, your position or slant on the topic assigned to you. It is this overall idea that will be developed throughout the essay.

Then, based upon that thesis, your job as a writer is to come up with at least three main points to support the thesis. Each of these points will be expressed in topic sentences. Topic sentence means it will be the first sentence of the body paragraph that discusses the main point.

An important part of this outlining is to use sequence words to signal the beginning of a new body paragraph. Words like first, second, third are common. But other words and phrases like to begin, next, finally, or any combination will achieve your purpose: to signal the beginning of a topic sentence. 

Read the topic sentences above: The first reason online study is so harder is that the student works in isolation. The word “first” is a signpost or sequence word. Notice that the key words of the thesis are repeated with “online study” and “harder.” The paragraph will focus on the main idea of "isolation."

In the second topic sentence, notice the repetition and the formula at work. This topic sentence has an identical structure to the first topic sentence. Only a few words have changed. This type of repetition creates parallelism and is a key to outlining successfully.

Now the third topic sentence: Again you see the signpost word, “third,” and the repeated words that refer back to the thesis and then the main idea.

Before beginning your first draft, try these quick, simple outlining techniques. Finally, consider showing your outline to your teacher or to one of the advisers at the Effective Writing Center. Doing so will give you  confidence and help get you off to a great start on your first draft. Good luck!