Guidelines to Composing a Blueprint for Any Research Paper
A blueprint is a base for any serious project, no matter whether it’s a construction site or a research paper. It’s quite hard to build up a good structure without a detailed plan.
How to Create an Outline for Any Research Paper
- Compose the first level.
- Add details. Since the first-level outlines are too plain and lack details, it’s necessary to add another level. Here, you provide several minor points for each main one. For example, if you are speaking about methods, you can provide a short introduction for each of them. The second-level points are marked with upper case letters.
- Make it more complicated.
- Stick to the style.
A good detailed outline consists of several levels. The first one involves the main points: your topic, your goal, your methods, a couple of words on each paragraph with arguments, and a couple of words on the conclusions. These points can be named with the help of short phrases or even word combinations. Use Roman numbers for this level.
Adding the third level can be quite difficult but it’s a useful trick. Having the third level, you can show the structure of your research paper in details. Besides that, having such a complicated outline, you show that you are a skilled academic writer who can manage even the most complicated multi-level plans. Arabic figures are used for this level.
It’s a great idea to create a style for your outline and stick to it through the whole process of working. If you have chosen to name the first-level points with short phrases, do it through the entire outline. If the second-level points are named with full phrases of a particular type, make sure this style is kept through the entire outline.
Check Your Research Outline
When done with writing, put your outline aside and return to it after a sufficient break. Take a fresh look at it as if you were a common reader. Look through the outline. Is everything clear? Can a person understand what you mean from the headings of the points? Does anything require an additional explanation?
Of course, check the outline for mistakes, typos, and so on. Such things should be removed from academic papers promptly. There are many online tools that do grammar checking of any texts, so, take advantage of such services for the sake of the quality.