An outline is an organizational tool used to keep track of all the topics and points that one plans to include in a piece of writing. It is a helpful guide in organizing a paper and gives a visual structure to the work, showing relationships and hierarchies within the content. Outlines are typically used at the beginning of the writing process and help writers see how their ideas and research fit together on a paragraph level. Outlines usually organize the following components of written work:

• Introduction
• Thesis
• Body (major points and minor points)
• Conclusion

Outlines come in several varieties, including sentence outlines and topic outlines). A sentence outline is a tool for composing a document, such as an essay, a paper, a book, or even an encyclopedia. It is a list used to organize the facts or points to be covered, and their order of presentation, by section. Topic outlines list the subtopics of a subject, arranged in levels, and while they can be used to plan a composition, they are most often used as a summary, such as in the form of a table of contents or the topic list in a college courses syllabus).

Outlines are useful for all forms of writing, from academic papers to creative writing, and help compartmentalize the stages of the writing process. When writing the outline, one can focus exclusively on the structure and big picture of the work, and when its time to write the first draft, the writer simply follows the outline so they know what to write about and in what order.