Creating a topic outline is a great way to organize your thoughts when writing an essay or preparing a speech. A topic outline concentrates on one word or short phrase topics and subtopics, which in turn will essentially identify each paragraph in your essay or each point of your speech. A typical topic outline will follow a pattern using Roman numerals, numbers, and capital and lower case
. letters such as I. A. B. 1. 2. II. A. B. 1. 2. a. b., where each Roman numeral will state a main topic and the numbers and letters beneath will state subtopics in relation to the main topics. You can find more information here: http://www.ccc.commnet.edu/mla/outlines.shtml
