Determine the purpose and audience of your paper. This will help you determine the tone and direction that your paper will take. You will need to have a thorough understanding of the direction and tone of your paper before you begin writing the sections of your outline in order to keep your paper consistent.
Develop the thesis of your paper and include it at the beginning of your outline. The APA outline style is extremely organized and focused on headings. However, the thesis statement and introduction come at the beginning of the outline before you begin using headings to separate individual sections.
Organize your main arguments into distinct groups within your outline using section headings. Create a topic sentence for each main argument paragraph. List your topic sentence as a section heading, directly after a roman numeral. For example, if your first main paragraph will discuss organization as a reason for writing an outline, it should be formatted as follows:
I. Organization can be successfully reached by creating an outline before starting your paper.
Use capital letters under each main section to give evidence of your main argument's topic sentence. Try to use quotations or paraphrase from one of your references as at least one piece of evidence. Input APA-style in-text citations directly into your outline whenever you reference the work of another author.