Tools of the craft: Outlining

Outlining applications and software has never seemed particularly interesting to me. In class, students normally use the utilities already included in word processing software intended for the purpose of preparing outlines. There are, though a few interesting online options that are worth commenting here. None of them is addressed to university students and/or scholars, but they may be helpful when authors are having difficulties unveiling the links between their ideas.

1.    Thesis builder. It’s a very simple application that conflates general, supporting and opposite arguments into an outline, illustrating the relationships between them. As a bonus, it constructs good thesis statements that can be used as headings in outlines.
2.    Essay map. Ideally, this tiny tool can guide you through the whole process of outlining a text. All you need to do is feed your propositions in the text window.