Every time you will be asked to write a research paper whether you are in high school or in college, your teacher or professors would require you to submit an outline along with your research paper. Most students do not know where to begin when it comes to writing their research paper outline. Here are a few tips when it comes to writing your outline:

• First of all make sure to ask your teacher or professor which type of research paper outline you are going to use whether it is a topic outline or sentence outline. This is also important because you might lose points when you use the wrong outline form.

 

• Do not use the word “outline” as the header of your outline. Use the title of your research paper. This should be centered one inch down from the top of your page. The outline title’s font should not be in caps, underlined or bolded and the text size should be the same as the rest of the outline.

 

• For main topics always use Roman numerals. For minor topics always use capital letters. For the subtopics you can use numbers. Then always use lower case letters for details.

 

• If you are going to make another level of division make sure that you have at least two points to make.

 

• Indent subtopics in your outline so that all letters or numbers line up with each other, this makes the research paper outline easier to follow.