Rules for writers, Tenth edition - Diana Hacker, Nancy Sommers 2021
Draft a plan
Exploring, planning, and drafting
A process for writing
To focus your ideas and develop your thesis, try listing and organizing supporting ideas. When you group and order your ideas, whether informally or formally, you identify how the different points fit together to support your thesis and organize your essay.
When to use an informal outline
An informal outline can be drafted and revised quickly to help you figure out a tentative organization. Informal outlines can take many forms. Perhaps the most common is simply the thesis followed by a list of major ideas. Here is one student’s informal outline.
INFORMAL OUTLINE
Working thesis: Animal testing should be banned because it is bad science and doesn’t contribute to biomedical advances.
✵ Most animals don’t serve as good models for the human body.
✵ Drug therapies can have vastly different effects on different species — ninety-two percent of all drugs shown to be effective in animal tests fail in human trials.
✵ Some of the largest biomedical discoveries were made without the use of animal testing.
✵ The most effective biomedical research methods — tissue engineering and computer modeling — don’t use animals.
✵ Animal studies are not scientifically necessary.
When to use a formal outline
Early in the writing process, rough outlines have certain advantages over formal outlines: They can be produced quickly, and they can be revised easily. However, a formal outline may be useful later in the writing process, after you have written a rough draft, to see whether the parts of your essay work together and whether your essay’s structure is logical.
The following formal outline is the basis for the research paper that appears in 58b. The student’s thesis is an important part of the outline. Everything else in the outline supports the thesis, directly or indirectly.
FORMAL OUTLINE
Thesis: In the name of public health and safety, state governments have the responsibility to shape public health policies and to regulate healthy eating choices, especially since doing so offers a potentially large social benefit for a relatively small cost.
I. Debates surrounding food regulation have a long history in the United States.
A. The 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act guarantees inspection of meat and dairy products.
B. Such regulations are considered reasonable because consumers are protected from harm with little cost.
C. Consumers consider reasonable regulations to be an important government function to stop harmful items from entering the marketplace.
II. Even though food meets safety standards, there is a need for further regulation.
A. The typical American diet—processed sugars, fats, and refined flours—is damaging over time.
B. Related health risks are diabetes, cancer, and heart problems.
C. Passing chronic-disease-related legislation is our single most important public health challenge.
III. Food legislation is not a popular solution for most Americans.
A. A proposed New York City regulation banning the sale of soft drinks in servings greater than twelve ounces failed in 2012, and in California a proposed soda tax failed in 2011.
B. Many consumers find such laws to be unreasonable restrictions on freedom of choice.
C. Opposition to food and beverage regulation is similar to the opposition to early tobacco legislation; the public views the issue as one of personal responsibility.
D. Counterpoint: Freedom of choice is a myth; our choices are heavily influenced by marketing.
IV. The United States has a history of regulations to discourage unhealthy behaviors.
A. Tobacco-related restrictions faced opposition.
B. Seat belt laws are a useful analogy.
C. The public seems to support laws that have a good cost-benefit ratio; the cost of food/beverage regulations is low, and most people agree that the benefits would be high.
V. Americans believe that personal choice is lost when regulations such as taxes and bans are instituted.
A. Regulations open up the door to excessive control and interfere with cultural and religious traditions.
B. Counterpoint: Burdens on individual liberty are a reasonable price to pay for large social health benefits.
VI. Public opposition continues to stand in the way of food regulation to promote healthier eating. We must consider whether to allow the costly trend of rising chronic disease to continue in the name of personal choice, or whether we are willing to support the legal changes and public health policies that will reverse that trend.