The Oxford Essential Guide to Writing.pdf - alexandriaesl

MAKING A PLAN 31
ward sex, love, and marriage, and more of the social and cultural
causes generating the change.
The Scratch Outline
An outline is a way of dividing a subject into its major parts,
of dividing these in turn into subparts, and so on, into finer
and finer detail. There are formal outlines, which are usually
turned in with a composition and even serve as compositions
in their own right. And there are informal outlines, often
called "working" or "scratch" outlines. The formal variety
follows rules that prescribe the alternating use of numbers and
letters and the way in which the analysis must proceed. But
formal outlines and their rules will not concern us here.
Our interest is in the scratch outline, which serves only the
writer's use and may be cast in any form that works. Begin
by asking: What are the major sections of my composition?
For example:
I. Beginning
II. How attitudes toward sex, love, and marriage in the 1990s differ
from those in the 1960s
III. Why the differences occurred
IV. Closing
Now apply a similar question to each major section:
I. Beginning
A. Identify subject and establish focus—on the reasons for the
change rather than on the change itself
B. Quality and limit: attitudes in question are the predominating
ones, those which set the tone of a generation
II. How attitudes toward sex, love, and marriage differ in the 1990s
from those in the 1960s
A. Sex—less permissive, less promiscuous
B. Love—cooler, not so completely a preemptive good