Directions for Outlining a Scholarly Text

 
Scholars and professionals typically read for the “line of reasoning” of a scholarly or
professional text. Just as we look for the plot of a movie or novel, so do academic and
professional readers look for the line of reasoning, or logical framework, of a piece of
professional or academic writing. Just as a plot has a few key elements (characters, exposition,
rising action, turning point, falling action, stasis) so too a line of reasoning has a few key
elements: premises, proposition, reasons, evidence/amplification as well as, in some cases,
counterarguments, concessions and refutations.

In some professions, in fact, such as finance and law, writers may provide only an outline of the
line of reasoning rather than a full-fledged verbally dense report. For the most part, however,
scholars and professional writers continue to convey their logical framework by means of
conventional sentences and paragraphs typically divided into subsections, whether within a
scholarly article by means of subheadings or in a full-length book by means of chapters (which
in turn may be subdivided by headings). In such instances, the academic reader takes in the
general verbiage but is typically reading for the line of reasoning, the bare-bones elements of the
main argument or explanation. This is not to suggest that the verbiage is mere padding,
however. Typically the verbiage serves, as here, to flesh out the main points and anticipate
confusion, to provide sometimes expansive definitions and examples beyond what is needed to
map the basic argument or explanation.

This assignment, which you will be practicing in different forms throughout the semester, will
help to accelerate your ability to read for—and think in terms of—the line of reasoning so that
you can quickly adapt to the habits of mind of scholars and professionals, who are inclined to
think in such units even if they are not aware of it. Once you acquire this habit, you will become
increasingly alert to whether your own ideas and those of your colleagues and the authors you
read are solid, logical, and well-developed. Over time, most students who learn this method use
it as a tool for planning and prewriting their presentations, papers, and even job interviews,
because a line of reasoning helps to organize any interaction that involves reasoning—whether
arguing or explaining something: reasons to hire you or fund your project, for example, or to
advance your thesis; reasons for building a bridge. In recent years, students in some of the more
collaborative disciplines, such as engineering and science, have been using outlines to
collaborate on their group projects as a way of organizing their findings and collaboratively
authoring their final reports. Outlining for the line of reasoning is also a useful way of
condensing and remarking the key points of the scholarly and professional texts you will be
reading in the future, not only in college but in many cases in the workplace as well for those
who will be expected to keep up with developments in their fields or to help their bosses do so.
 
As you grow familiar with this method, you will also begin to notice that textbooks, both high
school and college level, are basically outlines and syntheses of the lines of reasoning of
scholarly work. Typically the textbook writer identifies the logical framework—the premises,
proposition, reasons, evidence, counterarguments—made by scholars and distills these into
blocks of text with bolded and highlighted logical elements. As someone who is going to be
assigned undistilled scholarly and professional writing in the near future, you will find the
practice of reading for the line of reasoning an invaluable tool in reading quickly and for the

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essence of the work. Until you acquire this skill, you can easily get lost in the weeds of a
scholarly text, not knowing which details to fix upon. Thus the outline, which many students
complain about initially, ends up becoming for many students one of the most valuable
takeaways of the Penn critical writing method. Just as you have learned over the years to
watch films or read novels by identifying their plot-lines, predicting and judging them, so too
you will become adept at reading through and past the verbiage of scholarly texts to identify,
predict, and judge their lines of reasoning.

Along with practice in identifying a line of reasoning, we will also be asking you to analyze
the other key rhetorical elements of scholarly and professional (and indeed most) writing so
that you become skilled at writing for a range of audiences, purposes and genres. This
rhetorical flexibility will help you adapt to new writing situations by being able to take a
quick measure of the rhetorical demands that are being made upon you.

Detailed instructions follow, and an example of a completed outline is provided in Appendix

B at the end of this document.

 
Instructions:
Use the following template to create your outline of the scholarly text.
 
 
Your Name
Course and Instructor
Author and Title of Text  
I. Rhetorical Outline. The rhetorical outline analyzes the various rhetorical
features of the article or book. Note that if you are outlining a book, you will
likely continue to revise the outline as you gain a stronger understanding of the
book and its intended readership and function over time, just as, if you were
reading a novel, you’d get an increasingly better sense of where the story was
going.
 
Analyze, in the order given, these rhetorical elements:

Proposition: (paraphrase the proposition)

Audience: Who are the intended audiences? Do you feel that you are part of the text’s
intended readership? Why or why not?
Genre: What is the genre of this text?
Motive of Author: What do you think motivated the writer to produce this text?
Motive of Reader: Why would readers want to read this?
Goal: What does the writer expect the audience to do with what they learn from reading this
text? Do you think the writer achieves this goal?

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Plan: How is the text, as a whole, organized: what logical function does each chapter play to
demonstrate the proposition of the text as a whole (note: each chapter of a book has its own
proposition and logical structure; in turn, each chapter is an element in the text’s logical
structure.)
Rhetorical Strategies: What rhetorical features (other than arrangement, which you’ve
addressed above under “plan”) stand out for you as a reader? What did the writer do to reach
and persuade the intended audiences? For example, the kinds of reasons and evidence selected,
the arrangement of chapters, rhetorical devices, word choice, images, charts, graphs? Often the
easiest way to detect such rhetorical features is to consider how you’ve arrived at your
description of the audience: jargon indicates a specialized audience, for example, or the kinds
of reasons and evidence selected may suggest that the writer is aiming for readers of a
particular political orientation; images may point toward a visually oriented audience; numbers
and statistics toward a mathematically inclined readership, and so forth.
Keywords: Words and phrases that help to identify what the text is about, similar to Google
search terms that will help you, as a researcher, find work on this topic or find this chapter if
you were searching for information on a particular topic or term. Note that the text-level
keywords are simply the sum of the keywords you will identify with each chapter.

II. Logical Outline: Paraphrase the Key Elements of the Text’s Argument or
Explanation

Identify, name, and paraphrase the main elements of reasoning in the text (if you are outlining a
book, identify the main elements of reasoning by chapter).

If you are a visual/graphic learner, a chart of the line of reasoning may help. A typical line of
reasoning looks like this:  

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Premises (typically the writer provides more than one premise; these are facts or values that the
reader must accept, must take as a “given,” in order to consider the writer’s proposition)
Proposition (the thesis, claim, proposal, hypothesis that the writer wishes to explain or argue)
Reasons (the main points or generalizations that are offered to support the proposition)
Evidence/Amplification (the specific examples, explanations, illustrations or definitions that
help to make the reasons concrete and particular)
Counterargument (reasons and evidence that an opponent to your position might offer to
show that you are wrong, or that you, as a rhetor, offer to show that you have tested your
argument and have given consideration to opposing perspectives).
Concession (a general statement that acknowledges that there is validity to the
counterargument)
Refutation (a response to the counterargument or concession that maintains that your position
is nonetheless correct despite whatever concessions you agree to make).

III. Insert the Logical Conjunctions at the front of the paraphrases you did
in Step II.

Logical conjunctions are words that act as signposts indicating the logical function of a
particular statement or set of statements in an argument or explanation. “Thus,” for example,
lets the reader know that you have arrived at the conclusion—or what we are calling the
“proposition”—of the text. “Because” signals to the reader that you are providing a reason in
support of the proposition. “Given” signals to the reader that you are providing a premise,
something that the reader will need to agree with for the argument or explanation to move
forward. Along with serving as signposts, the logical conjunctions also act as “logical glue,”
helping to cohere the argument or explanation. Finally, logical conjunctions also serve as a
means of testing or proving the coherence of one’s argument or explanation. For example, a
“thus” needs to be earned by providing a sufficient number of reasons and evidence to support
it. Often novice writers will insert a “thus” or a “therefore” that hasn’t been earned; instead, it
is jammed into the text as a way of creating the illusion of a meaningful transition.

This third part of the outline entails inserting the proper logical transition into the paraphrased
logical outline to signpost the argument as well as to test and cohere it. Note that there are
many synonyms for these conjunctions but we are for the purposes of the outline requiring that
everyone keep it simple and stick to the limited number of conjunctions we will provide in the
table below. That way we are using a common language as well as accelerating a habit of mind
that depends on a small number of terms to test our logic as we construct an argument or
explanation.

Logical functions and conjunctions are matched sets:

Premises/given
Proposition/thus
Reasons/because (if an argument/justification)
Reasons/who, what, where, when, how, and causal why (if an explanation)
Evidence/for example
Amplification/that is
Counterargument/some would argue that

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Concession/granted
Refutation/however

Note that if you find yourself with “because” reasons as well as, say, “how” or “when” reasons,
you have likely not identified the main line of reasoning in a given text. You are likely to
encounter explanations imbedded in a text that is mainly a justification/argument as well as
justifications that are sidebars in what is mainly intended as an explanation. Your job is to
identify the predominant line of reasoning in a given text and ignore the sidebars, the tangents
that may be of interest but are not serving to advance the main line of reasoning. Thus when
you find you have “because” and “how” reasons, your task will be to ask whether the text is
mainly an argument justifying something, or mainly an explanation providing information
about something. Then edit your reasons accordingly. Also note that if you do not identify the
main proposition, your entire outline will be incoherent. For a table of logical functions and
conjunctions, as well as terms for evaluating these, see Appendix A.

IV: Summarize the logical function. At the end of the logical outline, summarize the basic
logical operations: “Explanatory proposition with four premises and two reasons,” or
“Justificatory proposition with five premises, four reasons, two counterarguments, a concession
and two refutations.”

V. Note the Keywords. At the end of the text, add any keywords or key phrases that help to
encapsulate the main topics addressed in the text. You will find these keywords useful for your
own research in the coming weeks.

For an example of an outline, see Appendix B.

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 Appendix A. Elements of Outlining

Conjunction Paraphrase Terms to Evaluate

(Introduces) Function (Succinct Effectiveness and
restatement Response
of sentence) (optional for your own and
others’ drafts for helping
you evaluate as you go
along)

Given Premise Agree/Disagree

Bifurcated, Not
Justificatory or Not
Thus Proposition Explanatory (as required),
Weak, Strong, Wordy,
Vague, Precise, Agree,
Disagree, Novel, Familiar
Not a justificatory
Justificatory reason, Novel, Familiar,
Because Reason Logically incoherent,
Contradicts another
reason in the essay,
Persuasive, Weak,
Redundant, Wordy,
Precise
Not an explanatory reason,
Novel, Familiar, Logically
How/Who/What/Where Explanatory incoherent, Is an effective
/When/Which/ Reason (or ineffective) way of
Explanatory Why dividing/organizing the
proposition’s
demonstration, Redundant,
Wordy, Precise
Amplification
Restatement, Unnecessary, Helpful,
That is Explanation, Ineffective, Effective,
Particularization, Novel, Familiar,
Evidence Persuasive, Weak

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For Example Evidence See “That Is”

Strong, Weak, Bifurcated,

Some would argue that Counterargument Does not directly relate to
the intended statement,
Novel, Familiar

Granted Concession See “However”

However Refutation Helpful, Novel,

Exception Unnecessary,
Persuasive, Weak,
Familiar

 
 
 
Appendix B: Example of an Outline
 
Student Name
Course
Instructor

Text: Anne Beaufort, Writing in the Real World  

 
Rhetorical Outline:  
Proposition: Students need to be educated in the specific set of knowledge domains required
to succeed as employees (and therefore writers) in the 21st century workplace.

Audience: Mainly writing program administration and faculty; others who teach writing or
would be interested in how students might be better prepared for “writing in the real
world.” Some chapters would also be interesting to students preparing for writing in the
workplace and for employers who want to learn more about why their employees are
often not very good writers even though they were good writers in college. The author
takes for granted an audience familiar with how writing is conventionally taught in high
schools and colleges, so the reader needs to be familiar with this or must accept
Beaufort’s overview as a premise. She also takes for granted that readers understand
such terms as “genre.” Her intended audience wants to improve writing education and
is seeking ways to understand how to do it. Arguably, another audience might be senior

7  
 executives who wish to understand how to better educate their employees as writers. I
am not an intended audience member but as a student writer am interested in how
Beaufort’s findings relate to Penn’s writing curriculum as well as how her work might
help me prepare for writing I will be doing in the future.  
 

Genre: Academic monograph, ethnography of a nonprofit organization

Motive of Author: To demonstrate the need for reform in conventional writing education so
that students can be better prepared for “writing in the real world.” To become a leader
in the field of writing education. To introduce a new way of studying writing.

Motive of Reader: To learn how to write in the workplace; to learn how to teach writing in a
new way that helps students write in the workplace. To see how a writing education
professional might use ethnography to understand writing. To find out what writing is
like in a nonprofit organization. To learn about research in the field of writing.

Author’s Goal : To demonstrate the kinds of writing demands there are for entry-level to
upper management employees in a professional organization. Show how difficult and
lengthy the process is for employees to adapt to writing for the workplace because of
the way employees have been taught to write in high school and college. Show how
professionals must reorient themselves from writing papers to learning the following:
how to understand and write for a range of real audiences; how to rhetorically analyze
and fulfill the deeper purposes of the many genres in their field; how to develop and
communicate sufficient knowledge of their organization’s product, services, and
identity; how to develop a writing process that consists mostly of deadline-- driven
short frequent assignments, interruptions, revisions based on brief feedback, and
obstacles such as lack of certain software or equipment. Most importantly, connect this
demonstration to the need for reform in conventional writing education so that students
can be better prepared for “writing in the real world.”  
 
Author’s Plan: Use the case study method to explain several truths about writing education.
First chapter justifies the need for this study. Second chapter explains the writing
situation at the study site. Third chapter explains discourse communities and how they
apply to the workplace. Fourth chapter explains how writers adapt to different
knowledge domains using the case study as evidence. Fifth chapter explains the
differing genres of the workplace and how they are learned. Sixth chapter explores the
antecedents to workplace writing among the participants. Seventh chapter explains the
amassed evidence, extracting implications for writing education. Eighth chapter
justifies the validity of the study, while conceding its limitations.

Rhetorical Strategies: Rhetorically, Beaufort chose a partially narrative structure within the
genre of ethnography in part because the qualitative research method is likelier to
appeal to her readership than would quantitative study. She also chose a nonprofit
organization (rather than, say, a banking firm) to study workplace writing, which would
also be appealing to her intended readership, who are probably going to be more
receptive to preparing writers to do community service work. While jargon is used,

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 overall the style is conversational and narrative while constrained by its purpose and
genre.  
 
Logical Outline  
 
Chapter 1: The Question of Expertise in Writing.  
 
(Given) writers need to be adaptable to suboptimal working environments.  
(Given) writing in the workplace is becoming much more difficult.  
(Given) employers are demanding better writers.  
(Given) writing expertise has not been sufficiently explained.  
(Given) the bridge between localized expertise and general expertise has not been
sufficiently made.  
(Thus) a study of the transition from academic to workplace writing will be documented.  
(How 1) the text will follow an ethnographic research method exploring how employees
make the transition from college to workplace writing  
Function: Explanatory proposition with five premises and one reason.  
Keywords: Workplace writing, academic writing, expertise, ethnography  
 
Chapter 2: Setting the Stage: The Cultural, Social, and Physical Terrain of Job Resource
Center  
 
(Thus) Writing is a crucial task for workers at the nonprofit Job Resource Center.
(Who) The four studied women (Selma, Birgitte, Pam, and Ursula) held various
important writing responsibilities.  
(For example) They collectively wrote several grant proposals a year, as well as
numerous smaller projects like letters and press releases.  
(How) The public image that the JRC projects is largely based upon writing tasks.  
(For example) Press releases, donor letters, and mission statements are thoroughly
pored over and analyzed.  
(However) The writing process at the JRC is limited by time and space.  
(For example) Writing often occurred in a rushed environment with deadlines always
looming.  
(For example) The limited space in the office led to very distracting, but collaborative,
conditions.  
Function: Explanatory proposition plus 2 reasons and evidence.  
Keywords: genre, grant proposals, press releases, mission statements, writing
environment, writing deadlines, writing in the workplace  
 
Chapter 3: The Institutional Site of Composing: Converging and Overlapping Discourse
Communities  
 
(Thus) Discourse communities become complex and essential to communicative
activity at the professional level.  
(How 1) The Job Resource Center (JRC), a discourse community itself, is in constant
interaction with various other discourse communities.  

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 (For example) The discourse communities of federal agencies, city governments,
philanthropic organizations, and business partners all have distinct rules and functions.  
(How 2) Business writers must learn to conform to the technical jargon, length, form,
tone, and audience of each discourse community.  
(How 3) Internal communication also falls within a discourse community.  
(For example) The JRC values face-to-face over written communication.  
Function: Explanatory proposition plus 3 reasons and evidence  
Keywords: discourse community, communicative activity, face-to-face
communication, written communication  
 
… (note: we have omitted the outline for Chapters 4-6 to shorten the example)  
 
Chapter 7 Bridging the Gap: From Classroom to Boardroom  
 
(Thus) The evidence gathered thus far suggests that writing education needs to be
improved.  
(Because 1) expert writers need to be familiar with at least five context-- -­‐ specific
knowledge domains: discourse community, subject matter, genre, rhetorical, and
writing process knowledge.  
(For example) All four women draw from knowledge domains, most of which they had
to learn on the job and intuitively rather than through explicit instruction. (Because 2)
The study shows that workplace writers, forced to adapt to many different situations,
are able to transfer very little of what they learn in school to what they need to know
how to do.  
(For example) None of the women had been taught how to recognize a discourse
community, genres, rhetorical strategies, or how to adapt their writing processes to
frequent ongoing tasks.  
(Because 3) Data suggest that the education process for writing is too hierarchical and
simulated.  
(That is) Writing assignments are disconnected from genres, are written only to one
person (the teacher), have no deep structure and have only one purpose, to get a grade.
They also tend to give practice in exploratory, thesis-driven essays, thesis, which is
very atypical of real world writing.  
Function: Justificatory proposition with 3 reasons and evidence.  
Keywords: knowledge domains, discourse community, genre, rhetoric, writing process,
knowledge transfer, writing assignments  
 
 

Chapter 8 Getting Here from There  

 
(Thus) The ethnographic methods used to conduct this study are valid.  
(Because 1) The author used prevailing theories and methods in qualitative research to
validate the study.  
(For example) The ethnographer considers how she is influencing the outcome of the
study.  

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 (Because 2) The investigator extensively cites field notes to prove validity.  
(Because 3) Ethnography allows an in-depth approach to tracking each of the writers
that would not be available to someone doing a quantitative, survey-based study.
(Because 4) A formal qualitative study is preferable to anecdote-based analysis that
can be typical of scholarly work in the field of writing.  
(However) It can be difficult to achieve reliability with ethnography, since results are
inherently localized to a time and place and the perspective of the scholar.  
(For example) Two of the informants had left the JRC by the end of the study.  
Function: Justificatory proposition plus 4 reasons, evidence, and concession.  
Keywords: qualitative study, academic writing, ethnography, anecdote-based analysis,
validity, ethnographer  
 
 
Frequently Asked Questions about Reading for the Line of Reasoning in a
Scholarly Text:  
 

1)What’s the best approach for doing this?

Familiarize yourself with the logical terminology. Similar to learning how to organize
mathematical operations by talking about addition, subtraction, multiplication, etc., learning the
vocabulary and strategic moves of a logical argument or explanation eventually accelerate your
ability to identify as well as test and construct logical explanations and arguments of your own,
thus helping you with your academic writing as well as reading. In addition, these terms will
become a handy shared vocabulary for talking about scholarly work and your own writing with
your colleagues, writing tutors, faculty, and others.  
Look over the text first to get a sense of what it’s setting out to do, how it’s organized.
Read the title, the back cover (if it’s a book), look at the bibliography and notes, the table of
contents, the subheadings. Then read the entire chapter or article before you try to outline.

Read with a pencil or highlighter and in your first read be on the lookout for the text’s
proposition/thesis. Generally, a scholarly or professional writer will provide the proposition
in the title and restate it at the end of the first or second paragraph, though not always. In
some fields and with some writers (and particularly writers who aren’t from the US), the
scholar may organize the text inductively or use some other organizational strategy such that
you may have to hunt for the proposition or not find it until the very last paragraph of the
text. Indeed, if you don’t encounter what appears to be the proposition by the end of the
first few pages, skip to the last few paragraphs of the text to see if it might be there. Put a
check mark or underline any sentences that strike you as the overall proposition of the text
(there may be more than one main idea). Then return to the beginning and read with an eye
to finding the reasons and evidence and other logical components that support the
proposition. Put a light pencil mark in the margin next to these, perhaps noting “R” for
reason and “E” for evidence, etc. Then review and write your outline. The more comfortable
you get with reading for the line of reasoning, and with a given author’s style of reasoning,

11  
the faster this process will become. Consider that you have for years taught yourself, and
have been taught, to look for a narrative line of reasoning in the novels and films and other
story forms you have read or screened. You know how to read for plot. Now you must
train yourself to read for argument or explanation. It’s the same intellectual operation, but
with a different genre and type of reasoning.  
 
What’s the difference between outlining chapters of a scholarly book versus articles or
essays?
Note that an article or an essay is a discrete entity that typically develops a single
proposition. A scholarly bok, on the other hand, is basically a much-expanded version of an
essay that is divided into chapters, each of which has its own proposition that works to
advance the proposition of the text as a whole. Thus when you outline a scholarly book, you
will be doing a double accounting: essentially guessing what the proposition of the whole
book is (even though you haven’t yet finished it) and how it relates to the proposition of the
individual chapters as these unfold. You will likely need to revise the proposition of the text
as you outline additional chapters. The more you get into this habit of mind, the better you
will grasp how scholarly texts are constructed as well as advance your analytical and reading
skills. As you proceed, keep in mind that each chapter has two jobs: one to develop its own
proposition, and the other to advance the proposition of the text as a whole. Note that the
proposition of the whole book is provided in the “Proposition” section of the Rhetorical
Outline. When outlining an article the proposition in the rhetorical outline will be the same
as the proposition in the logical outline, whereas in the book outline, the propositions of the
individual chapters will serve as “reasons” or some other function in support of the book’s
proposition as a whole.  

Why can’t I just use the chapter or article’s subheadings as my outline? Sometimes
editors, rather than the scholars themselves, write the chapter titles to make the text seem
more engaging or simply to add some white space to a text that looks too heavy and long or
to create the illusion of transitions where the writer hasn’t been able to come up with any. In
other words, titles and subheadings are not necessarily guides to the logical structure of the
chapter. Also, even if the author creates his or her own subtitles, they may be using these to
create effects other than marking off the line of reasoning. Your task is to learn how to
identify the line of reasoning of a scholarly text amidst the sea of verbiage that necessarily
accompanies and conveys that reasoning.  
 
Once I learn the line of reasoning of one article or book, will all the other scholarly writers
use that same structure? Unfortunately, no, the organization structure can vary dramatically
from one author to the next, one discipline to the next, and from one chapter to the next. Thus
you might find one author whose chapter titles serve as the chapter’s proposition; but another
author may not announce her proposition until you are several paragraphs into the chapter, and
in some cases, not until the last paragraph. Nonetheless, your outlines should always follow the
order of reasoning assigned: first the premises, then the proposition, reasons, evidence. Insert
other functions, such as a counterargument, concession, explanation, or exception, next to the
logical component they modify (for example, if the writer is refuting evidence, the refutation
should appear in the outline next to the evidence being refuted). Generally you will find a
pattern to the structure of the majority of chapters by a particular author, with the introduction

12  
and conclusion following a different (and more generic) structure given the rhetorical goals of
introductions and conclusions in most scholarly texts. And you will find that nearly every
scholarly or professional text relies on a line of reasoning as its center piece or scaffolding, no
matter how it might be organized.  
 
Why is it so difficult to distinguish justification from explanation? It’s difficult in part
because to some extent whether something reads as a justification or an explanation depends on
how the reader feels about the text’s proposition and reasons. If the reader is turning to the text
to glean more information about a topic, then chances are the text will feel like an explanation.
If the reader is turning to the text in order to see what the opposition is writing on a given topic,
the text will feel like justification. However, explanation and justification aren’t only in the
eyes of the beholder. It is also a function of the stance and attitude the writer takes: is the
writer setting out to argue against a particular position as well as for her own? There’s a
difference between explaining how to get to the Reading Terminal versus arguing that the best
way to get there is… Explanation is descriptive; justification is prescriptive.
However, it’s not really as critical to identify whether an argument is justificatory or
explanatory as it is to identify its line of reasoning and to be consistent in your application of
one or the other sort of reasons. If the text feels mainly like an explication of who did
something or what they did or how, when, where and why they did it, then use the explanatory
reasoning structure. If the text feels mainly like a “should” or “ought” or “why” excursion, then
use the why/because structure. Look as well for the signposts such as “because.” In all cases,
it’s something of a judgment call since most scholarly texts mingle explanation and
justification, though as a whole a given article, chapter, or book will have as its main goal to
explain or to argue. Both explanations and justifications are forms of persuasion, but they
persuade by being “factual” (explanatory) versus being values-based/normative (justificatory).

How should the outline be formatted? The outline should be one continuous document, with
the rhetorical outline of the text at the top, and each chapter’s logical outline following. If you
are writing the book outline, keep adding to and submitting the document as you add chapters.
Don’t forget to update the rhetorical part of the outline as you go along.
 
How will the outline be graded? Note that your professor will be giving you comments as you
go along but generally will not give you a grade on this assignment until the final outline is due.
Pay attention to the comments you receive and visit your professor or a tutor to make sure that
you are on the right track. This incremental approach gives you time to learn and improve your
outlines before the due date. Typically when you’re about halfway through the book you start
getting a sense of the writer’s organizational style and line of reasoning.

Is it alright for me to invent new logical conjunctions to explain things I’m seeing in the
text? The elements of reasoning are relatively limited, kind of like the parts of a chair. You can
focus on the seat, the four legs, the arms and the back—which are analogous to the line of
reasoning—or you can get lost in such things as the nails, the kind of wood, the style of the legs,
the curve of the back, and so on. While those things add to the overall rhetorical effect of the
chair, or an argument, they are not its foundation. Generally if you are trying to come up with
new words or new functions, you are probably straying from the main line of reasoning into
analyzing other aspects of the rhetoric of the text.  

13  
  
Does everyone find this outlining difficult to do? Yes, most people, including your profesors,
initially find the outline challenging, though they are more accustomed to reading scholarly work
for its line of reasoning. You are analyzing, synthesizing, and engaging in higher order
reasoning, while adjusting to scholarly writing in a specialized field. If you find yourself putting
an inordinate amount of time into this or any of the writing assignments, meet with your
professor or tutor. Chances are that you are working harder than you need to, or less efficiently
than you might. While outlining is initially time-consuming, it should get easier and faster as the
weeks unfold. Keep a steady pace, do what you can, and approach the outlining and the course
as you might a job. Don’t be a perfectionist. Just do the best you can and turn it in on time. Real
world writing is more deadline and less perfectionist-oriented than school writing. There are
always things to do and you need to learn how to do them in small steady steps. Scholarly and
professional writing are not literary arts; writers aren’t striving for beauty. They strive for
accuracy, clarity, usefulness, and timeliness. If you use this process of outlining to help you stage
your work and manage your time and expectations, you will sharpen your time and project
management skills as well as your analytic reading and writing skills.  
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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