This document discusses outlines and their importance. It defines an outline as a written plan that serves as a skeleton for paragraphs or a summary of essential information. Outlines give an overview of topics and show how subtopics relate. They are useful for organizing ideas before writing and analyzing papers. There are two main types of outlines - writing outlines made before writing and reading outlines made when studying papers. Outlines also have different notation systems like decimal or alphanumeric and use indentation. Formal outlines for submission use topic or sentence outlines. The document provides an example of a sentence outline for an essay about moving on from a past relationship.