ShmoopTube

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[Coop and Dino singing]

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Think of how dumb and blobby your body would be without a skeleton. [Man bouncing up and down]

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You’d be like a jellyfish or something...

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…Actually, that might be pretty cool…

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But the dumb and blobby thing definitely applies to your essays. [Essay blowing in the wind]

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If you use an outline, everything stays nice and rigid and organized.

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If not… you’re turning a jellyfish in to your teacher on Monday. [Boy hands over jellyfish to teacher]

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…Actually…that still sounds pretty cool…

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But just in case your teacher hates jellyfish or something, let's review how to make a solid outline.

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The first step, or the skull of your outline, if you will, is to pick a topic to write about. [Arrow points to a skull]

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You have to decide what you want your reader to get out of your paper.

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Then, it's time to think about the main points you’ll want to make in your paper.

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These will be the main points in your outline, as well. [Examples of main points included in a paper]

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You can think of them as ribs… or something…

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whatever, this analogy isn't perfect. Just go with it.

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And just like skeletons, outlines come in many styles. [Skeletons dressed as cowboy and magician]

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…Okay, fine, we'll drop the skeleton thing…

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Anyway, there’s the Alphanumeric outline, which uses Roman numerals for the main points...

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…and letters and numbers for the subpoints, which are the arguments and facts that help [Coop explaining alphanumeric outline]

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support each of your main topics.

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There’s also the decimal outline.

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The decimal outline uses numbers drawn out to – you guessed it – different decimal places. [Dino discussing the decimal outline]

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You can also decide to write your outline in short phrases -- or in full sentences.

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You can do whatever works best for you! Outlines are cool like that.

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Let’s take a look at an Alphanumeric outline with short phrases. [Cool guy in a street and paper airplane hits him in the face]

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Once you have your main points, you’ll want to add sub-points that help you figure out

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the details of what you have to say.

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For example, in the section of our outlines on “Monkeys in the Wild,” we may want

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to explore the places they live, how they behave, and what they eat. Since we’re doing [Examples of subpoints]

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an Alphanumeric outline, these subpoints will be labeled with capital letters.

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If we wanted to get really detailed, we could even add subpoints to the subpoints, which

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we would mark with numbers.

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For example, in talking about where monkeys live, we might want to go into details about

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the different continents where monkeys are found.

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How detailed you want your outline to be depends on how much information you want to include [Person scribbling out subpoints]

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in your paper.

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Your outline can also include a section for an introduction and conclusion.

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Some people find that it’s easier to write the introduction and conclusion after they’ve

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already outlined their main point. But again - the best way to do it is the best way that works for you.

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And voila! There you have it – the finished outline. [Boy celebrates with a finished outline]

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Oh – and just because we think of an outline as the “bones” of your paper doesn’t

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mean you can get out of doing one with the “dog ate my homework” excuse.

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Sorry. [Girl shows teacher a bag of dog poop]

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