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Standard Outline Format

Purpose: The purpose of an outline is to identify the most important ideas in one or more chapters of a textbook and organize them according to their importance.

I. Roman Numerals are used to identify the biggest and most important ideas. If you are outlining more than one chapter, then you will usually use roman numerals to identify the chapter titles. If you are only outlining one chapter then you will use roman numerals to identify section headings.

A. Main Ideas are identified by capital letters. In the textbook that we use the main ideas are all in red bold letters. Every time you see a heading that is big and red you will write it down with a capital letter to the left of it.

1. sub-headings are smaller parts of a main idea. They are identified by numbers. In our text book, most subheadings are green. Sometimes, however, there aren’t any subheadings. In that case you will write the first sentence of a paragraph as a subheading.

a. supporting details are usually examples, proper nouns or numbers. They are identified by lower case letters.

b. supporting detail

c. supporting detail

2. sub-heading

a.

b

B. Main Idea

1. sub-heading

a. supporting detail

b. supporting detail

The above explanation was done in outline format.

You will notice that every time there is an idea that is a part of a larger one, the smaller idea is indented.

The use of roman numerals, capital letters , numbers and lower case letters will vary depending on the length of the section or paragraph.