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Organizing & Revising Your Paper

Revising your writing. How to integrate your viewpoint. How to do a reverse outline. What makes an effective title? How to finish your paper.

Reverse Outline

A Reverse Outline helps you to analyze what you've already written and to look for repetitions or points that might not be in the most effective order.   You create a reverse outline after your essay has been written.  The reverse outline shows the "big picture" of your paper.

Creating a reverse outline

How do I create a reverse outline?

  • Write or type a number next to each of your paragraphs throughout the whole paper.
  • For paragraph 1, write #1 on the first line of a separate sheet of paper, and list the main point(s) of that paragraph (a phrase or short sentence)
  • Continue this process until you reach the end of the paper.

Example:

Essay’s Claim/Thesis: Deinstitutionalizing mental patients in the late twentieth- century led to transforming the “hobo” to the “homeless person.”

  1. Introduction
  2. The image of the hobo before World War II
  3. The image of the homeless person today
  4. The effects of deinstitutionalization
  5. A history of deinstitutionalization
  6. A history of the depression; how the depression is both different and similar to the time period of deinstitutionalization; incorrect beliefs about the causes and timeframe of deinstitutionalization
  7. A history of deinstitutionalization
  8. The Reagan administration’s policies on deinstitutionalization
  9. The realities of life as a “homeless person” contrasted to the romantic notions of “riding the rails.”
  10. Conclusion

How do I analyze the reverse outline to help me re-organize my essay?

  • First, ask the following questions:
  1. Does each paragraph fit in with your overall argument?
  2. Is there a theme or point that repeats throughout the paper? If so, could you
  3. move those points closer together?
  4. Now that you’ve labeled each paragraph, are there points that are missing from your argument that you’d like to add?
  5. Are there points that don’t seem connected to your argument that you might cut?
  • Then, based on your answers to the above questions, reorganize the paragraphs and then revise the whole essay draft to make sure that you’ve clarified transitions between points.