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How To Select A Good Term Paper Outline Format

Outlining a term paper is the best way to start your assignment. Too many students go headfirst into their research or start writing the essay without even thinking about how they should plan it first. Term papers are worth a big chunk of your grade, and they need to be good to not lower your average. To some students, writing a term paper and all the work that goes along with it can seem overwhelming and they’ll get easily frustrated. You don’t have to feel stressed over your term paper when you have a good outline and you know where to go from there. This article is going to prepare you for just that.

Starting your Outline for a Term Paper

The very first thing you should always do when writing any project, is look at the instructions from your teacher. They are the ones who will be grading this paper, so they will have told you what they want from it. If your teacher is vague about something, or you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask them for help; that’s why they’re there. After getting some clarity on what’s expected of you, make a list of everything your paper has to have, even down to miniscule details. Don’t leave anything out.

With that list, you should divide your outline into sections. Does you teacher want an introduction and conclusion, and what about a cover letter? Include every part that you need and briefly summarize what will go where.

Now that you know what you’ll need, you can go do your research. Divide it by which section of your term paper it will go in and look at your sources. Do you have too many stories, or too many statistics? Balance where the research goes and what type of source it is. After that, you can start to fill in your paper between the quotes.

Using your Outline to Write a Term Paper

The hardest part is over. You have your outline, and the research is done. Now all you need to do is write. With the summarizing and quotes put in, your first draft practically wrote itself. Fill in everything else and write to connect each new piece of information and source that you’ve included. This shouldn’t be too hard because by now you have a good knowledge of your topic and have been thinking about it a lot.