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Dreading the Writing Assignment? Outlines to the Rescue
by: Christine Taylor

Writing technical articles is a challenge. There you sit, surrounded by reams of research, notes and interviews. Where do you start?

Remember 5th grade English? You start with an outline.

Outlining has fallen on hard times lately. Mind mapping and brainstorming are much more fashionable. These techniques are great when generating ideas, but once you’ve got your ideas germinating you’ve got to outline them. Without an outline, your article will:

  1. Be an unstructured mess.
  2. Take three times as long to write.

Don’t let this happen to you – outline. If it’s been a while since 5th grade – or if your “progressive” school didn’t stoop to teach you actual English skills – let me remind you why it’s important and how to do it.

  • Outlining keeps you from writing an unstructured mess. Readers, especially American readers, prefer distinct sections in their media. For example, look at American screenplays. Movies invariably have three acts, and anything that doesn’t have them is considered an art film. Effective speeches often contain three parts, and readers like three points because the structure makes easier to retain information.

  • Outlining shrinks your writing time by a third to a half. How do you whittle down that pile of research notes and interviews into an article or white paper? You guess it – outline it. By assigning sections to your notes before you start writing, you’ll categorize, simplify and clarify. Not bad before you’ve even written an introduction. For example, let’s say you’re writing an article about mirroring. You can divide such an article into several different sections depending on what your client wants to get across. Here are some examples of different outlines:
    1. 1) Explanation of mirroring 2) Differences between local and remote mirroring, 3) Contrasting mirroring with other forms of replication, or
    2. 1) Define mirroring 2) List environments that require mirroring 3) Decision matrix for assigning different mirroring levels.

Once you’ve done your research it’s simple to assign pieces to different sections. Believe me, it’ll light a fire under your writing time.

Christine Taylor is president of Keyword Copywriting, which helps marketing and PR pros leverage their relationships with technology clients. E-mail her at chris@keywordcopy.com, call her at 760-249-6071, or check out Keyword’s Website at www.keywordcopy.com

About The Author

Christine writes technical marketing communications for data storage, networking and pharmaceutical clients, including:

  • EMC
  • Commvault
  • Quantum
  • StoneFly Networks
  • Sybase
  • Maranti Networks
  • ClariStor
  • Fujitsu
  • AES
  • Obagi Medical Products

She specializes in trade journal articles, white papers, press kits and online content. She serves as a contributing editor to Computer Technology Review and acts as editor-in-chief for Storage Inc. and Storage Management Solutions.

Before moving into technical journalism and marketing she served 20 years in the IT trenches, including systems administration at Avery Dennison's Research and Development division.
chris@keywordcopy.com

This article was posted on January 28, 2004

 


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 Writing Help for College Students
 by: Tamara Owen

Your literature professor has asked you to write a 7-page essay comparing Medieval and Renaissance poetry; your economics professor wants 15 pages on how globalization is affecting the economy in three different countries; and your mathematics professor has forgotten this is a mathematics class, and wants 5 pages on the quadratic formula. And you have been staring at the computer screen for over an hour wondering how on earth you are going to do all of this in the next four days.

This is an all-too-familiar scene to many students. Many students learn of these large assignments at the beginning of the semester when they receive their class syllabi, and immediately forget about them because November seems like years away. Other students are busy with extracurricular sports, trying to adjust to being away from home for the first time, and other events and issues. Still other students are quite frankly terrified of the writing process, believing the blank page to be worse than their worst nightmare, and so these assignments get shoved aside to remain untouched until the last minute.

It is an interesting fact of college life that all students, regardless of major or discipline, are asked to write about their subject matter -- often quite extensively. While it is certainly important that all individuals be literate, and know how to read and write in a variety of capacities, styles, and genres, it is also the case that not everyone has to be a professional academic writer (www.korepetycje.com/join_us.html). Engineers need to know how to design bridges or better towel racks; pilots need to be able to take off and land safely and smoothly; and physicians need to be able to diagnose illnesses and injuries and to prescribe the correct medical interventions. None of these people needs to know how to write a term paper.

What, then, are the options for the poor student struggling in the first paragraph? What will happen to the student who is a prodigy on the piano but is facing failure because she cannot write 10 pages on Beethoven? What will happen to the next Frank Lloyd Wright who is stuck in his psychology seminar, unable to write a series of vignettes portraying various mental illnesses?

There are a few options. Most college campuses have writing labs, where many students are helped with researching and writing their papers. Many students form study groups, where they help each other through the tough assignments. Some students write their custom essays and term papers (see: http://www.korepetycje.com/indexam.html) and then pay an editor to polish them. Still others turn to professional writing services for assistance with their assignments. This is where services such as CustomPapers.com come in. We have a large staff of professional writers who specialize in writing papers about a wide variety of disciplines ranging from economics to ecology, marketing to Mozart, Hemingway to heart murmurs. We can also assist students with related projects, such as PowerPoint Presentations. In the many years of our existence, we have found tremendous success helping students with assignments of all sizes, all levels of difficulty, and all subjects.

Regardless of what type of help you choose, the important thing is that you get through college as quickly and effectively as possible. College is a step leading up to the rest of your life -- don't let a term paper be the skateboard in your path.


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