Class Fourteen: Writing: Outline Your Paper

October 11, 2012

We have covered three items to improve your writing:

(1)  Eliminate Passive Voice - using it only with due deliberateness.

(2)  Focus on sentences containing one or more of the Four Horsemen of Bad Writing: It, of, in, and has/have.

(3)  Important Lines.  This step took three steps - (1) Looking at the first lines of each paragraphs. Do they flow and adequately summarize your paper.  (2)  If not then choose a corresponding number of important lines of your paper.  Of the hundred - perhaps hundreds of - sentences - which are the twelve to fifteen  that you would keep to express the sum and substance of your paper.  (3)  Reorganize your lines so that reading them from start to finish will give the reader a proper understanding of your paper.

Now we will cover the fourth technique to improve your writing.

(4)  Outline your paper, starting with your theme sentence.  The list the items in order that either support your argument, or tell your story.  Once you have an acceptable cogent outline - then rearrange your lines in that order, creating new lines as necessary, and use your outline to structure your important lines.