How Do I Create An Outline For An Essay About Drug Abuse In US?


There are many different steps in writing an essay—first you must come up with a topic, then you must do research and take notes, then you can outline the paper to lay out how you are going to organize the information you have, and finally you can actually write the paper. Too many students skip the outlining step in order to save time. But in reality, taking the time to make a good outline will save you lots of time in the writing process and put you out ahead in the long run.

Follow these easy tips to learn how to create an outline for an essay about drug abuse in the United States:

  • Focus in on a specific subject
  • A topic like drug abuse in the United States is way too broad to create a successful paper on. Instead you should focus in on something more specific such as treatment strategies or the impacts on society of drug abuse in the United States.

  • Break that subject down into its parts, and make those parts your sections
  • Once you have decided on a more specific topic you should try to break that topic down into its parts. For instance, if your subject is impacts of society of drug abuse in the United States, the parts of that subject could be: crime and the criminal justice system, healthcare system, lost productivity, and impacts on children and families. These parts can make up the sections of your paper, or the major headings of your outline.

  • Organize your notes under those sections
  • Once you have decided on your section topics and you have entered them into your outline you can begin to organize your notes into the sections. When you do this, be sure to put quotation marks around quotes that you are taking directly from a source, and be sure to include the source citation with the note. That way, when you go to write, you won’t have to go back to check what the source is and if you took the note directly from it or if you paraphrased it.

  • Go back and ask whether the way you’ve organized it is best
  • Once you finish outlining, you should also go back and ask whether you have organized your sections in the best way possible. Having completed your outline, it may turn out that a different order of the sections makes more sense.