Outline
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An outline is a hierarchical way to display related items of text to graphically depict their relationships.
They are often used by students for research papers. Outlines provide a summary showing the logical flow of a paper. They are useful because they:
- (1) help the writer organize their thoughts before getting bogged down in word choice and sentence structure;
- (2) show which ideas need illustration or elaboration; and
- (3) help the writer decide on an organizational technique for the report, whether it be logical, chronological, or categorical in nature.
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[edit] Outlining reports
Textbooks generally recommend that, before constructing an outline, a writer should research the topic and take notes--preferably on index cards--as they go. The notes need not be more than a summary of what the author thinks is important. Each note card normally has a heading (called a slug) in the upper-left hand corner. Each slug later becomes a heading or subheading in the outline. The writer can later lay their cards on a table and group those that belong together. This creates a rough division of the topic. The writer may then put the cards in an order that approximates a final outline.
[edit] Outlining stories
Outline is also a name for a prose telling of a story to be turned into a screenplay. Sometimes called a one page (one page synopsis, about 1 - 3 pages). It is generally longer and more detailed than a standard synopsis (1 - 2 paragraphs), but shorter and less detailed than a treatment or a step outline. There are different ways to do these outlines and they vary in length.
[edit] Location outlines
Some use a location outline which is very similar to scene cards (index cards) but only has location headings followed by short clear sentences of what goes on in each location.
[edit] Plot outlines
In comics, an outline--often pluralised as outlines--refers to a stage in the development where the story has been broken down very loosely in a style similar to storyboarding in film development.
The pencils will be very loose (i.e., the sketch rough), the main aim being to layout the flow of panels across a page, ensure the story successfully builds suspense and to work out points of view, camera angles and character positions within panels. This can also be referred to as a plot outline or a layout.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
Mary Ellen Guffey, "Organizing and Writing Business Messages," Business Communication: Process and Product, p. 160-161.
"Numbers: Lists and Outlines," Manual for Writers and Editors (Merriam-Webster, Incorporated: 1998), p. 103.
White, Basil (1996) Developing Products and Their Rhetoric from a Single Hierarchical Model, 1996 Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Society for Technical Communication, 43, 223-224. [1]
OWL: Online Writing Lab, Purdue University
William E. Coles, Jr. "Outline," World Book Online (Accessed January 5, 2006)
