The Role of Essay Outlines in Writing

Have you ever heard of essay outlines? If your answer is negative, then you are in the right place. The outline is considered the skeleton of the essay. It is also termed the text representation of the thesis statement and critical supportive information in the essay. 

An essay is the most commonly written assignment for students in schools and colleges. Outlines are helpful in many ways, such as helping the writers arrange their thoughts and ideas before the beginning of writing. This helps provide a quick synopsis of the essay and acts as a guide to the writer as they work on the next paragraph. However, creating an outline of an essay is not challenging.  In this article, we will provide valuable insights regarding the key points that must be considered when writing an effective outline essay. 

Understanding the essay outline

An essay outline is an informal document that lists the parts of the essay to ensure that the writer stays on track and doesn't miss a single point in the essay. Also, the outline is generally written in incomplete sentences as it is not a formal document similar to making notes.

The outline is very important in every stage of the writing process. This is a place where you arrange your ideas in a concise and clear roadmap. The outline helps in getting back on track in case you are stuck at some point in the essay. 

In schools, colleges, and universities, students must submit the outline of the essay before starting the writing process. This helps the instructors to asses that the students are on the right track when selecting an essay topic consisting of a large number of reference sources. Also, it helps the instructors that the students meet the criteria of the essay and complete the task with expertise. 

Components of Essay outline 

Although every essay is unique and different in its way, some fundamental essays are as follows:

• Introduction section

The introduction is the very and foremost part of the essay, and as the name suggests, it is the place where you introduce the points that will be explained in the essay. 

The opening statement of the hook statement. 

This lies in the introduction section. An opening statement is a full sentence that is required to attract the attention of the readers. It is a concise statement from which the audience relates themselves. 

• Thesis statement

Describing the thesis statement in the introduction section is also very important  It is a definitive statement consisting of clear arguments. This helps the readers understand the perspective of the writer when going through the essay. 

• Body paragraph section

The essay can consist of two paragraphs or even four paragraphs unless there is clear instruction regarding the number of paragraphs that can be included in the body of the essay. Therefore, it is the decision of the writer when it comes to the number of paragraphs that will be included in the essay. 

However, in case you are willing to more than one source for the information presented in the essay, using the universal rule i.e. one source per body paragraph can be very helpful.  However, applying this rule depends on the type of essay you are creating. 

• Conclusion 

As you get to the conclusion parts, you are almost done with your essay. In this part of the essay, you summarise the main ideas listed in the body paragraphs. This is an opportunity to share the final thoughts and viewpoints that you would like your readers to see before they end the essay reading. 

Creating  essay outline

As of now, you are ready to craft the outline of your essay. Therefore, it is essential to get started. But the question arises: how? So the following steps presented here will help you in making the essay outline.

• Select your goal: It is crucial to decide on the thesis statement. Although the exact terminology may not be precise to you, it is vital to have some idea regarding the argument that will be provided and defended in the essay. It is easy to brainstorm thoughts and make a solid outline, and then you will have a solid purpose for the essay. 
• Filter the fluff: As you come up with the ideas, you take into consideration every possible idea, and information you can get and can be included in the essay. After collecting the information it is important to review the information and select the most appropriate information for the essay. 
• Track the different points that will be described in different body paragraphs: 

Decide the primary arguments in each paragraph that will constitute your essay and a set of concepts you write down. 

• Use a standard template in the outline: Arrange all the main arguments in an understandable and well-organized framework that the information will complete as you prepare the draft of the essay with the help of a template that suits the type of essay you are willing to write.

Important tips for creating an effective essay outline

Creating an outline for the essay will be very easy with the following key tips mentioned below:

Understand the purpose of the essay: Before outlining the essay, it is important to understand the purpose of the essay. It is important to keep track of the following things:

Understanding the requirements of the papers

• The topic of the essay
• The audience of the essay

Decide an order: When drafting the outline of the essay, helps in providing the structure and purpose of the future essay. Therefore it becomes important to decide the order of the essay such as spatially, chronologically, or importance-based. 

Making the structure for a short essay: In case you are creating a short essay or an essay consisting of 500 words, then the structure should be like 

• Primary idea
• Supporting idea 1
• Supporting idea 2
• Supporting idea 3
• Conclusion

Developing the outline: Making use of templates is considered the best way to create sentence outlines. You can select any template essay that suits you the best and answer each text box question in a single line. This will help in providing a concise one-slime summary of the arguments. Then, this can be shared with the instructors or classmates for their evaluation and input. 

Importance of essay outline

An essay outline helps keep track of and prove the argument most effectively. To avoid deviating from the centre of the point, it is important to start the essay with an outline. The main reason behind creating the essay outline is that it is less confusing and easier to follow. The essay outline provides various benefits to the essay:

• An essay beginning with the essay outline provides more opportunity for transition, and also inappropriate places: The lack of transitional words highlights that the essay is prepared without an essay outline. Therefore, whether the essay is written for academics or customers, transition phrases help readers easily understand the arguments.
• Improves paragraph structure:  Essay outline can play an important role in improving the overall structure of the paragraphs. Each paragraph should start with a topic sentence and finish with an argument, supporting evidence, analysis, and closing statement. Students who do not make use of essay outlines, generally violate these rules, and structures, which results in losing marks in the essay. 
• No misplaced paragraphs and distractions: Any experienced reader or writer can easily identify that the essay is without any paragraph, as it will be very confusing.  The creation of the arguments helps in making it easy to decide what type of argument you are willing to support.  The possibility of mixing increases as you start writing your essay without an outline and considering the structure of the essay. 
• Non-repetition in the arguments and ideas presented by the writer: Another major benefit of preparing an outline before the start of the essay is that it helps reduce the chances of repetition of words when writing a long essay. Writing an extended essay without a clear mindset can easily get you carried away and lose track of the topic. Therefore, almost every professional writer makes use of an essay outline before writing the essay.  Also, if you are not good at asking for an essay outline, you can get the help of experts present in the assignment. 

Common Mistakes made in essay outlines

As we prepare the outline of the essay we generally make very common mistakes. As we all are humans we can lose our focus at times. Therefore in this section, we will provide a list of common mistakes that generally occur. Taking note of these mistakes can help in reducing these common mistakes and increase the overall quality of the outline essay. 

• Basic spelling errors: When reviewing the outline essay, one common mistake you may notice is the spelling mistake. Therefore, it is important to focus more on spelling and use Microsoft Word and other grammar-checking applications to ensure that the content is error-free. 
• Sentence Fragmentation: You can modify the sentences by reading them aloud. Various sentences could not stay together as they were without an intro.  Therefore, if there are any types of sentences like this, then it is advisable to merge them with another sentence or remove them. It is important to ensure that there are full sentences in the essay outlines to get good grades on the paper. 
• Bad spacing: If necessary then ensure that your paper is double-spaced. However, it can go beyond that. It is important to ensure that the paper looks consistent and well-organized overall.  If it does not seem so, then there must be an issue with the spacing. Students generally lose points due to bad spacing in their essays so it is important to check for this and rectify if present. 
• Missing transitions: Again, reading the essay aloud will help you identify the missing transitions. Read aloud hope in answering the questions such as what transitions are missing? Does the paper sound clear? Also, you can talk to our experts present in the assignment ninjas to remove any flaws that you may have missed. 

Conclusion

Once you have prepared the outline, start writing the essay to complete the work as soon as possible. However, in case the above information presented does not help you with your doubts, then you can contact our professional writers in the “the assignment ninjas” to help you write a perfect essay and essay outline as per your requirement. We provide error-free and plagiarism-free pieces of writing according to the requirements of the assignment. This will help you get good grades on your assignments and also provide a clear message to the audience after they read the essay.