10 Reasons to Outline Your Next Long Document

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Remember those awful research paper projects you had to do in junior high school, the ones where you had to turn in first your outline, then your note cards, then your draft, and then your final? Composing in Word isn't like that, thank goodness. Once you create an outline in Word, you've got something to start with. Not something you'll type once and then type again later—something you can use to build your document, edit it, and organize (or reorganize) it. And with that outline you create, you can even move seamlessly to and from a table of contents, linked accurately to the work in progress.

So if you have a resistance to outlining (and you're not alone), consider these reasons for outlining long documents in Word:

1. You're more likely to meet your goals. If your job involves writing grant proposals, producing product evaluations, writing annual reports, or composing print publications, you know that your document must reach a particular goal. You need to know where you're going, why you're going there, and who you're trying to take along with you. When you first type the document headings in Word, you're defining the steps that will take you to the goal of your publication. Your headings reflect the major categories of information your audience will want to know. As you create the outline, you can make sure you're completely covering all the topics that you need to reach your end result.
2. You can create an organized, thoughtful document. Your outline will list not only the large-ticket categories but also smaller subtopics within each category. The multi-level capabilities Word outlines offer (up to nine levels) enable you to organize your thoughts down to the smallest detail.
3. The headings remind you where you're going. Once you have an outline that you're happy with, you're free to write the document as the muse strikes. If you're a stream-of-consciousness writer, you can simply go with the flow and let the words fly—in the appropriate sections, of course. (Actually, you can always move them later if you choose.) If you're more of a left-brained, analytical writer, you can craft your sentences within the structured topics, making sure you've got the requisite topic sentence, supporting sentences, and closing or transition sentence.
4. You can easily reorganize your document later. Because Word offers you the means of moving parts of your document easily, even after your long document is filled with text, you can collapse topics to their headings and move them around as you like. And of course, Undo always reverses your action if you decide it was a bad move afterward.
5. You can expand and collapse topics. The expand and collapse features of Word's outline enable you to change what you're viewing in the document. A fully expanded outline will show everything entered thus far—so all the text you've written, subheadings you've added, and notes you've inserted will be visible in a fully expanded outline view. If you want to limit the display to only headings and subheadings, you can collapse the outline to show only those items. This enables you to check to make sure that your organization is logical, that you've covered everything you want to cover, and that you've got your topics in the right order.
6. You can divide up long documents and make assignments to get documents done faster. Word's Master Document feature enables you to break long documents up into smaller chunks that you can then assign to other writers. When you pull the document back together, all the pieces can be merged into one coherent whole. Using the outlining feature enables you to see at a glance where the most logical places for divisions would be. For more about creating and working with Master Documents, see Chapter 25, "Creating and Controlling Master Documents."
7. You can see what doesn't fit. Outlining also gives you the means to see what doesn't work in your document. If there's a topic that really needs to be a separate document, or a heading that is begging for a rewrite, it will stick out like a sore thumb. Of course, you can edit, move, and enter text in Outline view, so making those changes is a simple matter.
8. You can easily change heading levels. Word's outlining feature comes with its own toolbar, giving you the means to promote or demote headings and text. If you want to change a level 1 heading to a level 2 heading, for example, you can do that with a click of a button. This also works for text you want to raise to a heading or headings you want to drop to body text level.
9. You can work seamlessly with the TOC. If you've created a table of contents for your document, you can update the TOC on the fly and move directly to the TOC to make changes, if needed. This saves you the hassle—and potential error—of creating a separate document with a TOC that might not get updated when the document does.
10. You can print your outline for handouts, reviews, or talking points. Word gives you the option of printing only the outline for your publication, which is a nice feature when you want to show others key points in a document or presentation but don't want them reading along word for word. Whether you do this in outline review stage, as part of a collaborative effort, or you condense your finished document down to a printable outline, you can display and print only the headings you want your readers to see.