Chapter 13 Organizing, Writing, and Outlining Presentations 387speech delivery. (In fact, many instructors require students to turn in a formal
outline before the presentation. Be sure to check on your instructor’s preferences.)
You may already be familiar with the basics of outlining from your high
school courses or from your college composition class. We’ll refresh you with a
discussion of the essentials of outlining before we move to types of outlines and
the heart of this section: the preparation and speaking outlines.
Essentials of Outlining
In every phase of outlining, basic guidelines will help you structure and prepare
your speech. A solid outline will clearly reveal the structure of your arguments
and the hierarchy of your points.
c Use standard symbols. What an outline does, essentially, is put the hierarchy
of points visualized in Figure 13.1 (p. 370) into a text format. To do this,
outlines generally use roman numerals, letters, and standard numbers to
indicate different levels of importance in the hierarchy.I. Main Point
A. Subpoint
B. Subpoint
- Sub-subpoint
- Sub-subpoint
If you need to break down the sub-subpoints even further, you may use lower-
case letters (a, b, etc.) to create sub-sub-subpoints.
c Use subdivisions properly. It is basic logic that a whole of anything—a sand-
wich, a doughnut, or an outline heading—can never be split into fewer
than two pieces. Therefore, as you divide your ideas from main points to
subpoints, remember that each numbered or lettered entry must come in a
series of at least two points: if you have a I, you must have a II; if you have
an A, you must have a B; and so on.
c Separate the parts of your speech. It is typically helpful to label your introduc-
tion, conclusion, and even your transitions to distinguish them from the
body of your speech (your main points and supporting subpoints).
c Call out your specific purpose and thesis. Many instructors want students
to include this pertinent information at the top of the outline, so check
with your instructor to determine his or her preference. You may feel
that you already know this information by heart, but it can be helpful
to see it at the top of your outline page, ensuring that all of your main
points support the purpose and thesis. Also, you may wind up tweak-
ing them a bit as you work your way through the outlining process.
c Cite your sources. As discussed in Chapter 12, it is extremely important to
give proper citations in your speech. As you work on the outline, you
should always mark where a specific point requires credit. Directly after
the point, either insert a footnote or a reference in parentheses; once
CONNECT
The ability to outline
complex information
into manageable steps
is useful beyond public
speaking. Chapter 9
covers task roles in
groups, which involve
people organizing the
activities that help achieve
a group’s goals. If you and
your siblings want to plan
a huge celebration for
your parents’ twenty-fifth
wedding anniversary, you
should outline all of the
steps needed to make it
happen: creating a guest
list, contacting and com-
paring venues, sending
out invitations, and so on.ALTHOUGH HOMER
SIMPSON typically eats a
whole doughnut in one big
bite, he does, on occasion,
split it up. Even he knows you
can’t split it into less than two
bites. © 20th Century Fox/Photofest