First reason or example 2. Formal Outline Guidelines 1. Numbers, letters, and indentations signal groupings and levels of importance. Each level has more than one entry.
All subdivisions are at the same level of generality.
Headings do not overlap. Entries are grammatically parallel. Only the first word of each entry is capitalized. Periods end each sentence in a sentence outline but not the items in a topic outline. The introductory and concluding paragraphs are omitted, but the thesis statement is usually given above the outline itself.