With the holidays in full swing, and the semester crashing to a close, you may feel like your to-do list is just as long as Santa’s!

There’s plenty you can do for yourself to help tame some of the anxiety that rears its head near the end of a semester: Limiting screen time, eating well, & getting plenty of rest are all great advice.

A good suggestion that directly applies to writing your final paper is to plan ahead (as much as possible, anyway). You can read, study, and review class materials to prepare for an exam, but what about planning ahead for that final research paper? What if it could be more like assembling a puzzle than untangling a knot of thoughts and ideas?

That’s where an outline comes in! Since research papers are one of our specialties, we’ve got you covered on all the ins & outs of a good outline (bad pun totally intended).

Think of an outline as the instructions for assembling your paper. A good outline will help you organize many of the elements in your paper. Like: 

• how you want to introduce your topic
• what points you’d like to make in your paper (along with supporting evidence)
• how to best wrap things up at the paper’s conclusion. 

Then, when you’re ready to start writing your paper, you’re able to follow the outline and create an engaging paper with a logical flow for maximum readability.

The parts of a good outline

The content of a research paper can usually be divided into three basic parts: the introduction, the presentation of research and other supporting information, and the conclusion. Let’s use those three parts as the foundation of our outline.

The introduction is, well, just that. It introduces your topic, providing background and, most importantly, your main idea or thesis statement. The first numeral (usually a Roman numeral – “I”) in your outline is the introduction with the main idea and any background information would be sub-points underneath the introduction.

The longest portion of your paper is the body – everything you write between the introduction and the conclusion. This is the meat & potatoes of your paper and it’s much easier to write if you already have a good outline. 

Each part of the body of your paper should be related to one of the key points you need to talk about to support your paper’s main idea. Each key point should be another Roman numeral in your outline (e.g., II, III, IV…). 

When organizing the outline, it’s a good idea to think about how each key point will best flow into the next. What research have you done that supports each of your key points? Place the relevant research, in the form of sentences or even direct quotations, underneath each key point of your outline. Each of these supporting pieces of evidence will become a point of their own (A, B, C…).

After you’ve presented all of your evidence, it’s time to tackle the conclusion. The conclusion of your paper summarizes your findings, restates the main idea, and clarifies any final thoughts. Remember, you’re not introducing anything new, but emphasizing how the content you’ve already presented fits into a cohesive argument. In a lot of ways, your conclusion will resemble the introduction to your paper.

With a complete outline, you’ll have a roadmap for a solid research paper that not only makes a strong case but also follows a logical path, one sure to be appreciated by your readers.

If you’d like to review a sample outline and learn more about how you can create and use your own outline with PERRLA, we’d encourage you to visit the ‘Writing Papers’ section of the PERRLA Help Center, where you’ll find articles such as ‘Creating a Good Outline’ and ‘Using Your Outline While Writing.’