At CHS, pre-writing is required for most formal ELA writing assignments. Pre-writing is an important step in the writing process because it is where we establish our purpose, identify our audience, and collect and organize our ideas. There are both informal and formal types of pre-writing. Here are a few of the most common types of pre-writing. You should ALWAYS format your pre-writing according to your instructor’s wishes.
INFORMAL PRE-WRITING:
Brainstorming on Paper:
FORMAL PRE-WRITING:
The Outline:
The Formal Outline
There are two types of outlines: the topic outline (which uses only short phrases throughout) and the sentence outline (which uses complete sentences throughout). At CHS, we use encourage use of the sentence outline as it is more comprehensive and thorough.
Labeling parts of an outline:
The MLA handbook encourages the following labels for the descending parts of an outline:
I. [roman numerals]
A. [capital letters]
1. [numbers]
a. [lower case letters]
(1) [numbers in parentheses]
(a) [lower case letters in parentheses]
A proper final outline should: