Hierarchy of ideas and outlining
In some of your work, you will begin with a predetermined outline that includes the major sections of the report. This can be helpful, but you will still need to organize the information you have within those major headings. A more detailed outline will serve your purposes for organizing in this case. If you do not have a predetermined structure, you will have to create your outline on your own. In both cases, the process is the same. You need to identify your main ideas and sub ideas and arrange them in a logical order that serves your purpose and ultimately supports your main message. A good outline offers the following advantages for your report:
- An outline will help you to organize your ideas more thoughtfully, with a view to categorizing and subdividing the main ideas of the report;
- writing to an outline lets you focus on one section at a time and avoids the feeling of becoming overwhelmed with too much factual information. One of your goals in planning a report is to make some sense of all the information you have gathered and to arrange that information in a way that is going to have an impact on your readers. The outline can help achieve this goal and provide you with a way to work on your writing in smaller more manageable sections;
- organizing your document often means deciding not to include some of the information you discovered in your research. Remember, your readers don't care about the process you went through to get to your recommendations or conclusions. They definitely do want to know that your ideas make sense. The readers want a clear, concise end-product, together with evidence of adequate information and logical thought processes.
