User:The Transhumanist/Outlines

This page explains Wikipedia outlines, what they are, their standard styles, how to build them, and how to maintain them.

What are outlines?
With respect to Wikipedia development, the term "outline" is short for "hierarchical outline". Hierarchical outlines are a type of list and tree structure. They fall under the list and stand-alone list guidelines, and are covered in great detail below.

The reasons Wikipedia outlines are titled "Outline of" rather than "Hierarchical outline of" are:
 * 1) "Hierarchical outline of" is cumbersome to type
 * 2) "Hierarchical outline of" makes a title inconveniently long
 * 3) "Outline" is used in the context of "hierarchical outline" throughout the encyclopedia publishing field

In the world-at-large, hierarchical outlines come in two flavors: topic outlines and sentence outlines. Sentence outlines are _____. Topic outlines are ______.

In Wikipedia, outlines generally start out as topic outlines, and as they develop with the addition of annotations, they become a hybrid of topic and sentence outlines. In Wikipedia lists (including outlines), list entries have 2 portions: the topic, and an annotation (optional). An annotation is a description or note of clarification that immediately follows the topic portion of a list entry, usually divided from it by a separator (usually a dash or colon). the. The base of each entry in a Wikipedia outline is a topic, while each entry's annotation is comprised of one or more sentences.

History of outlines
To provide perspective on _______, ______.

History of outlines in other encyclopedias
=== History of outlines in Wikipedia