Whether you are still in high school, or you recently joined your dream university, essay writing will always be part of your student life. Therefore, the sooner you master all the hacks that can help you hone your essay writing skills, the more seamless things will be for you. One such hack is an essay outline.

An essay outline is simply a planning tool that you can use to organize or structure your thoughts and ideas on a particular subject. It’s like a summary or plan that you prepare so you can organize your content in perfect, logical order once you start writing your essay.

While you can always write your essay without it, it’s a good idea to first craft one as

• It acts as a sketch of your essay, hence reminds you of important points that you could have otherwise forgotten.
• It helps you structure your thoughts and determine the right order to write them so they can be appealing.
• It helps you review the logic of what you’ll be writing. This enables you to remove any illogical or repetitive points. At the same time, an outline enables you to fill gaps that would have otherwise gone an unnoticed if you didn’t have one.

How to Write an Essay Outline

Now that you know the benefits of an outline, how do you go about the actual writing process? Well since it’s a framework of an essay, a typical one as shown on our outline for examples for essay, boasts the structure of the actual essay. So it has;

• The Introduction

The purpose of the introduction in the outline is to help you craft an enticing first sentence once you start writing the essay and a strong thesis statement. In respect to that here is where you write your topic and thesis statement.

• The Body

As you will see on our examples of an essay outline below, a regular outline body usually has a minimum of three and a maximum of five paragraphs. Thus, even your outline should follow the same structure. It should have at least three points that you’ll write about in your paragraph, and supporting points relating to your thesis.

• The conclusion

The conclusion of your outline should have a statement restating your thesis and driving home the significance of your work. Check out the example essay outline below to get what we mean

Essay Outline Example

1. Introduction

1. Essay topic
2. Thesis statement
3. The Body

• Paragraph 1

1. Introductory sentence (thesis argument)
2. Support opening sentence by stating facts, stats, quotations and whatever you need to develop your argument
3. closing and transition, explain how the supporting points above relate to the thesis of the essay

• Paragraph 2

1. Introductory sentence (thesis argument)
2. Support opening sentence by stating facts, stats, quotations and whatever you need to develop your argument
3. closing and transition, explain how the supporting facts above relate to the thesis of the essay

• Paragraph 3

1. Introductory sentence (thesis argument)
2. Support opening sentence by stating facts, stats, quotations and whatever you need to develop your argument
3. closing and transition, explain how the supporting points above relate to the thesis of the essay

• Paragraph 4

1. Opening sentence (thesis argument)
2. Support opening sentence by stating facts, stats, quotations and whatever you need to develop your argument
3. closing and transition, explain how the supporting facts above relate to the thesis of the essay
4. Conclusion

1. Restate thesis
2. Summarize the main point
3. Closing statement or call to action

Tips for Writing an Exemplary Essay Outline

Anyone can come up with an outline, but not everybody can craft an exemplary one. Keeping the following tips and later properly reviewing our examples of an essay outline while creating yours will help you be among the few who can create an outstanding essay outline

1. Get Some Facts

Once you’re assigned an essay topic, the first thing you should do is conduct some research on it. Use reliable sources and take note of all the relevant findings you come across. Researching first is incredibly essential. It helps you form an opinion on the topic and gives you an idea of what thesis statement you could use for the assignment.

However, note, at this point, you’re just researching to familiarize yourself with the task ahead and not writing anything. Familiarizing yourself with the topic also means identifying your audience and understanding its purpose.

• Choose a Topic

Once you’ve formed your opinion on the topic, understood who your readers are, and the purpose of your essay, your next step should be creating the thesis statement. Do so carefully as your entire essay will revolve around the thesis statement.

Additionally, the thesis statement you develop will help you come up with the rest of the points. For instance, if your thesis statement says; global warming is a human-made epidemic, then all your points will revolve around proving this argument. Therefore ensure you choose a thesis statement with utmost care.

• Organize ideas

Once you come up with a thesis statement and a topic sentence, your next stop should be at organizing your introductory sentence ideas for the rest of the paragraphs. For instance, if, during your research, you find out that greenhouse emissions results in global warming, the introductory sentence for your first paragraph should be something like, humans cause global warming through greenhouse emissions.

You should then proceed to support this by listing facts, statistics, and examples. Do this for the rest of the paragraphs and finally conclude your outline by restating, summarizing, and calling to action.

Outline Essay Example

Here are a few examples of an essay outline

Example of an Essay Outline

Essay Title: Is downloading music without the artists’ permission theft?

• Thesis statement; downloading music for free is no different than stealing