Where To Look For A Research Paper Outline Template
Students usually start research papers near the end of high school or in the first year of college, and this whole new species of essay is assigned to the students with little to no instruction or assistance. As research papers make up the bulk of higher level writing, it isn’t all too difficult to find examples of outlines online. How do you know which format is the correct format and which formats are incorrect?
The answer is simple. If your professor or teacher didn’t specify what kind of format the outline had to be in, it isn’t unlikely that the professor or teacher actually doesn’t care what format the outline is in, as long as it displays that you’re on the right track with your paper. Therefore, if you go to Google Images (not just Google, which will display a bunch of paywall sites to which you won’t have instant access), you should see dozens upon dozens of research paper outline templates or examples that fit your needs.
A safe bet at this point would be to mirror the format of the essay in order to avoid the possibility that your teacher or professor did specify what format the outline was to be in, and you just didn’t hear or maybe missed that day of class. A good rule of thumb is that there is never a reason why your teacher or professor would switch formats in the middle of the paper. Your average teacher or professor usually would prefer for you to write in the same format all year, and most are only knowledgeable in the formats that he or she used when he or she was in college. If you can’t find any information on which format in which to write your essay, some teachers or professors put it in the syllabus and see who actually read the syllabus by looking at the formats of the first collected essay.
You can find the formats for such outlines on any online writing lab, such as the Purdue OWL. Remember that it is always possible, especially if you are still in high school, that your teacher or professor never actually designated a formal format. If this is the case, it isn’t necessarily harmful to use one of the academic formats for your outline, or possibly even your entire paper. It displays a level of seriousness you have for the subject that other students might not have.