Composing
Constructing an Outline
Emilie Zickel
Outlines can be helpful as you plan out your essay. They encourage you to organize your thoughts and sketch out the structure of your essay before you set out to draft. Here is a strategy for creating an outline that should help your final essay maintain focus and coherence. Always write in full sentences when outlining so that you are sure that you know what you want to say.
I. Put the thesis at the top of the page – full sentence, labeled THESIS
- Underline your paper’s core idea – what you are attempting to support or what your key area of focus is on
- Then, indicate each different idea/subtopic in the thesis that you will address in the paper. You can number those subtopics.
- for example: THESIS: While recommendations to (1)have fewer children, (2)eat a meat-free diet, and (3)avoid air and car travel are certainly ways to help alleviate climate change problems, those recommendations are unsound and unhelpful.
II. Turn each subtopic point from the thesis into a new, separate number in the outline, beneath and separate from the thesis. For example:
(1) The recommendation to have fewer children is an unhelpful way to address climate change.
(2) The recommendation to eat a meat-free diet is an unhelpful way to address climate change.
(3) The recommendation to avoid air and car travel is an unhelpful way to address climate change.
It is helpful to label each of these points as “THESIS POINT 1, 2 or 3” in the outline (see below)
III. Add additional paragraphs/sections
- You may need some background, definition, or context paragraphs before you can discuss the key ideas from the thesis. If you add any paragraphs like these, label them so that their function in your paper is clear.
- If you are constructing an argument, you should include a counterargument that offers opposition to your thesis AND a response to that counterargument
IV. Add source materials
- Once you have sketched out the flow of ideas, support each point with a quote, paraphrase or summary of information from your sources.
- source material should provide evidence/proof to support your topic sentences
- source material should relate directly to the topic sentence
EXAMPLE OUTLINE:
I. THESIS: While recommendations to (1)have fewer children, (2)eat a meat-free diet, and (3)avoid air and car travel are certainly ways to help alleviate climate change problems, those recommendations are unsound and unhelpful.
II. DEFINITION: What is climate change?
- include statistics from National Academy of Sciences
- include data from Murphy and Anderson (334)
III. THESIS POINT 1: The recommendation to have fewer children is an unhelpful way to address climate change.Why?
- Evidence of this recommendation from Miller, GreenLiving, and memes
- This is unhelpful because
- Jones (345) – Western population controls will not matter
IV. THESIS POINT 2: The recommendation to eat a meat-free diet is an unhelpful way to address climate change. Why?
- Evidence of this recommendation from Jameison, Vegan News, memes
- This is actually somewhat useful advice because meat farms do produce significant environmental toxins (Adams 32; Schlosser 219-222)
- However, it is not a practical way to address climate change because of the few numbers of vegetarians in the world now; change would be slow (Boll Foundation)
V. THESIS POINT 3: The recommendation to avoid air and car travel is an unhelpful way to address climate change. Why?
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