There are five steps to writing a great essay outline. You choose a topic, do in-depth research, create an outline, write your first draft, and then work on the final document.
In this guide, we will look at how to write an outline for any essay your instructor asks you to write.
To be clear, all essays feature a 5-paragraph format, meaning the assignment must have an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
At least that is a common baseline for essays such as:
- Argumentative essays
- Persuasive essays
- Analytical essays
- Expository or explanatory essays and
- Critical essays
How long these essays should be will vary significantly based on the topic to investigate, the instructions in the prompt, the depth of research, and the number of points (or ideas) to support your thesis.
We don’t focus on the length of an essay when creating an outline for assignment. That’s because an outline is just framework we use to organize our ideas, research, or points in a logical order before writing the essay.
What is An Essay Outline?
An essay outline is an academic writing framework that you can use to organize your research ideas so that you can write your essay flawlessly within the shortest time possible. Your instructor may or may not ask you to submit an outline. However, it’s still important that you create one yourself to make writing the essay assignment easy and fast.
To be clear, an essay outline does more than just make an essay easy to write. By organizing your ideas into a logical order, you won’t miss the key points when writing and you maintain a consistent flow of information throughout the essay.
You don’t need an outline to write an essay, but it’s going to be a challenge to work without one. There’s a reason why teachers, content creators, and professors recommend using essay outlines.
- An outline helps you to organize your thoughts prior to writing, based on the research that you’ve conducted.
- The outline helps you to maintain a logical flow of information, making it easy for you to scrutinize accordingly
- Since you’ve outlined the most important information that you would like to add to an essay, you can be sure that you won’t miss anything when writing your essay. You already have a manuscript.
At very least, using an outline puts you in a position where you can write an A+ essay, and therefore you shouldn’t write your essay without one.
How to Write an Essay Outline Fast
We’ve written hundreds of different types of essays at Help for Assessment. The one thing that’s clear to us, based on the academic writing standards, it’s that a typical essay will have 5-paragraphs. There’s an introduction paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion paragraph.
It follows, then, that the general outline for an essay has to feature the 5-paragraph component. Keep this in mind as you continue to learn how to write an essay outline in the section below.
Parts of an Essay
There are three parts of an essay that should feature in your outline:
- Introduction: State the topic of your essay followed by the thesis statement. The thesis statement is the claim or position you take on a topic. Later in the body section, you’ll use data, facts, and examples to support this thesis.
- Body paragraphs: In an outline, and even in the essay itself, you will need to have a minimum of three paragraphs. There is no set maximum number of paragraphs that an essay assignment should have, but these three must appear. Each paragraph starts with a topic sentence, followed by evidence, such a data, facts, and examples to support the thesis. There should be a closing link that shows how you used the evidence to support your claim as well as introduce the next consecutive paragraph.
- Conclusion: It ties everything you’ve written in the introduction and body paragraphs together. Some authors suggest that restating the thesis is a good way to end an essay. There are also other ways to do that, including ending with a quote, appealing to readers’ emotions, and using rhetorical questions.
Essay Format Examples
The following is an example of an essay outline to give you an idea of what the format you create should look like.
How to Write an Essay Outline
It’s important to write an essay outline even if your professor doesn’t ask you to submit one. Doing so will help you get started with writing and stay on the right track throughout the process. So how exactly do you write an outline for an essay?
- Read the essay brief to understand what your teacher wants your assignment to be like. Information in the prompt often includes the type of essay, the number of arguments to use, and the expected word count.
- Do some preliminary research to understand your topic even further. It’s important to look at scholarly information form trusted sources such as Google Scholar and Oxford Academy so that you only include credible and authentic references in your essay.
- Create an outline, which you will use to organize your points. Write your thesis statement in the introduction and then organize your points accordingly, making sure you you’re your arguments in the order of their significance.
The thesis statement of your essay has to be debatable. Also, your introduction should feature a strong hook to get your readers interested in reading the essay and understanding your argument.
Get Help with Essay Writing
There’s a lot that goes into an essay than just putting words on the paper. You have to do research, determine the right sources to cite, outline your ideas, write your first draft, and review your work.
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