Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org
Mariah then began to expand the ideas in her outline into a paragraph. Notice how the
outline helped her guarantee that all her sentences in the body of the paragraph develop
the topic sentence.
Tip
If you write your first draft on the computer, consider creating a new file folder for each
course with a set of subfolders inside the course folders for each assignment you are
given. Label the folders clearly with the course names, and label each assignment folder
and word processing document with a title that you will easily recognize. The
assignment name is a good choice for the document. Then use that subfolder to store all
the drafts you create. When you start each new draft, do not just write over the last one.
Instead, save the draft with a new tag after the title—draft 1, draft 2, and so on—so that
you will have a complete history of drafts in case your instructor wishes you to submit
them.
In your documents, observe any formatting requirements—for margins, headers,
placement of page numbers, and other layout matters—that your instructor requires.