Reverse Outline

Reverse Outlines

Many times students make a plan to write an essay in a certain orders with certain details, but as they do the actual writing it seems to take a different turn.  Sometimes fresh ideas come to mind as they are in the process of writing.  Other times, they can’t find the material they had hoped to include.  A helpful strategy is to write a Reverse Outline.  This kind of outline shows them more clearly what they actually wrote in their essays.

If you think of an outline, the major points coincide with Roman numerals (i.e. I, II, III, etc.) and the important points that come under those points are designated with capital letters (i.e. A, B, C, etc.). The specific details are numbers and lower case letters (i.e. 1, 2, 3, etc.; a, b, c, etc.)

In the structure of a paper, the capital letters  are the topic sentences for the paragraphs and the numbers and letters are the details, often individual sentences within the paragraph.  To construct a Reverse Outline, a student re-reads his paper, and fills in the headings for the various layers of an outline.

Example

I.  Introduction

                A.  Attention grabber  (add specific ideas)

                B.  Thesis & road map

II.  First Important Point

A.      Topic of Paragraph 1

1.    Detail (These are the data or ideas as they appear in the sentence)

2.    Detail

3.    Detail (You may many details for each paragraph, but they should fit with the topic of that paragraph)

B.      Topic of Paragraph 2

1.    Detail 

2.    Detail

3.    Detail

C.  Topic of Paragraph 3

1.    Detail 

2.    Detail

3.    Detail

III.  Second Important Point

A.      Topic of Paragraph 1

1.    Detail

2.    Detail

3.    Detail

B.      Topic of Paragraph 2

1.    Detail 

2.    Detail

3.    Detail

C.  Topic of Paragraph 3

1.    Detail 

2.    Detail

3.    Detail

and so forth