Classical outlines , such as the one you will write in this class, have a defined format. Informal outlines are abbreviated and hierarchic, like classical outlines, but they may be presented in other formats. One common informal format is the bulleted list . Bullets imply that the sequence of items is not as important as it would be if numbers were used. You can often find information organized in outline format even if there is no explicit outline.
Outlines are hierarchic.
An outline begins by breaking an article, book, or chapter into major divisions or headings. In a book, the chapters are a natural first division. Each of these is further divided into groups, which may correspond to subheadings. These can be divided further, even to the topic sentence of each paragraph. The classical outline has a set format.