Creating a thesis outline helps organize thoughts and ensure all material is covered. A bulleted list with indents and different indicators can be used. A two- or three-column outline with notes and citations can be helpful, as well as considering the style guide being used.
Writing a thesis outline before writing your thesis is a great way to organize your thoughts. This helps your work progress in a logical manner, as well as ensuring that all of your material is covered. Preparing a thesis outline also helps to identify areas that are inadequately covered or that are explained in too much detail. It’s best to start with your thesis statement and gather all of your research in one place.
Most people write a thesis outline in the form of a bulleted list because this is not only easy to write but easy to reference later. The list can have a series of indents towards the end. For example, you could create some topic headings to indicate the main points of the thesis paragraphs, and then indent additional bullets underneath those headings with details and supplemental information.
It may be helpful to use different types of indicators for each point in the thesis outline. For example, in topics that will be paragraph headings, you can choose to use Roman numerals. For details indented below these you can use numbers and for additional indents below details you can use letters. This makes it easier to understand and provides your information with a hierarchical schema that can facilitate thesis writing once the thesis outline is complete.
Some people find it helpful to create a two- or three-column thesis outline. The first column can be the bulleted outline as described above, while the second column can include additional notes that may be too long to fit in the outline. A third column can include relevant citations that can be incorporated into the article, or it can include reference material and citations to be included on a bibliography page.
It may also be helpful to consider the style guide you are using for your thesis when creating a thesis outline. Examples of academic style guides include the Modern Language Association (MLA) style guide or the American Psychological Association (APA) style guide. If you keep your style guide in mind, writing the thesis will be easier later on; you can even choose to write source citations as you use them in the proper format. They can be copied and pasted on paper. Creating a comprehensive thesis outline is one of the best ways to write an excellent thesis.
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