How to Outline Anything

A great professor once told me that you’re either a heavy planner or a heavy reviser. Some people can plot out every step of a project and follow through inturn, while others need to get their hands dirty in order to make anything worthwhile. Personally, I think George Burns had it right:

How to Write a Complete Sentence

This typewriter wants you to learn how to write a complete sentence.

The problem I hear hobbyist writers–the ones with notebooks of poetry and short stories that they have no interest in publishing–complain about the most is their lack of knowledge regarding English grammatical structure. Now, as an English major who has studied the history and development of the language, I can tell you with 100% certainty that English can be cruel, frustrating, and downright illogical. Expressing complicated ideas can be like pulling teeth, when half the rules don’t make any practical sense at all. For those of you who have been struggling for years, I present my first tutorial: How to Write a Complete Sentence.