An outline is generally a way for you to really focus on the writing that you will do. Without a plan for the writing, you may find yourself veering off from the main topic into other territory that has no connection to your work at all. For many writers, writing a paper seems like a daunting task because there is no formal organization to the work. The outline delivers the ability to organize the writer's thoughts and the paper's format. Both of these together offer a directed effort that provides the writer with a way in to the writing. This is even more important in research because it helps the writer to take disparate bits of information and assemble them in a clear and cohesive manner. Thus, the intent of the writing is more clearly stated and the reader can enjoy and understand the work more fully. There are several forms of outlines.

For this course, we will use the following three: the topic outline, the sentence outline, the paragraph outline. In a normal research situation, you would generally choose only one of these to use in your process. However, so that you can fully understand how information can be built into a research process, we will investigate the first three by creating all three. This certainly sounds like a lot of work. However, the three will build upon each other in staircase fashion and will provide a way for you to write early sections of the research paper.