ANTH 415/515: Nutrition and Health

An outline is like a blueprint for writing: it helps you develop the big picture and structure for your papers. Outlines list the themes that you plan to use to address your research question, along with their corresponding articles and evidence, and then organize them into an order that will logically build towards your conclusions and answer to your research questions. 

Step 1: Identify the information you want to use from your sources

• What key information, issues, theories, approaches, evidence, and/or arguments will you use in your paper?

Step 2: Identify relationships, links, and common themes

• What relationships and links do you see between the information you want to use from each of your sources?
• What common themes and arguments can you build from the information and evidence in your sources?

Step 3: Arrange themes and arguments

• How can you arrange your themes and arguments hierarchically and sequentially so that they logically build towards evidence-based conclusions about your thesis statement?
• These will represent the paragraphs of your research paper

For more help developing your outline, contact the Writing Center and make an online appointment to meet with one of their consultants.