Paper Skeleton

The following activity is adapted from the Paper Skeleton revision exercise from the University of Massachusettes Writing Center (see the full reference and link at the bottom of this page). 

Completing a paper skeleton can help with overall organization and ensure that you are using topic sentences at the beginning of the paragraph and wrapping up your topics at the end of the paragraph.

Instructions

1. Open up your draft and then open a new document. 

2. For each body paragraph that you are creating a skeleton for, copy and paste the first line of the paragraph and the last line of the paragraph into the new document.

   1. • You can also organize these by labeling the paragraph and whether the line is the first sentence (FS) or last sentence (LS) of the paragraph. See below for an example. 

3. After those are copied into the new document, write the topic of the paragraph below the paragraph. 

For example, 

Paragraph 1
FS: Educating visitors is one way that zoos promote conservation.
LS: This can lead to the conservation of animals with the help of others in the community.
Topic: Educating visitors helps conservation efforts. 

Paragraph 2
FS: Zoos also make an impact by creating organizations and taking part in programs involving the conservation of animals.
LS: The AZA’s efforts in the conservation of animals has also expanded into captive breeding and population management.
Topic: Zoos' impact on conservation.

Paragraph 3
FS: With habitats that are threatened, captive breeding may be important to the conservation of the endangered species.
LS: Animals such as lions, bald eagles, otters, and more are up for ‘adoption’.
Topic: Captive breeding of endangered species also helps conservation by ensuring.

Once you have created a skeleton for all the paragraphs that you plan on revising with this method, check for the following:

1. Is there a topic sentence? 

   1. • Does the first sentence jump straight into the research or does it state the topic of that paragraph? Make sure that the paragraph is clearly stating the point. (Reminder: if you are writing the observation section in a creative non-fiction style, this may not work for that section of the paper.)

2. Does the paragraph wrap up the point at the end?

   1. • Make sure to wrap up your ideas before moving on to the next. The only exception to this is when a sub-topic is broken up over several paragraphs due to a large amount of research. In that case, a transition should still be present (this likely will not be the case for your paper, given the length of the scholarly section). 

3. Does the paragraph get off-topic or change topics? 

   1. • Ensure that each paragraph covers one topic and that topic is well supported. If your last sentence seems unrelated to the first, then you likely have too many topics in that paragraph. Look for where you can break up the topics into two separate paragraphs.  

This activity is adapted from the following resource:  
        Useted, L. (2015, May). Paper Skeleton. UMass Amherst Writing Center. https://www.umass.edu/writing-center/paper-skeleton