With the arrival of word processing and electronic outlining software we can begin to look at outlining as an ongoing process involving a whole set of iterative, nonsequential, but overlapping activities, some of which have traditionally been done to prepare an outline, such as promoting or demoting topics, while others used to be considered distinctly different stages (researching, writing, revising), and still others were not even considered relevant to outlining (collaborative construction of meaning).

By contrast to the classic paper outline, the electronic outline, then, is always open, ready for further change, unfinished and full of potential. At the beginning of the outlining process, we may do more reading, and at the end, more tinkering with words, but we never stop either activity completely, at least not on a major project. We proceed by bits and pieces. We do a little research, we synthesize that, we write a little about it, we realize we need to do more reading, we edit the paragraph we wrote, we think...and so it goes. How illogical we are, and how holistic! We do not take the straight road to the final document, we meander. We do not go by stages, we cycle through different activities, day after day, gradually changing our emphasis as our ideas get clear, and we discover what we are doing.

The iterative nature of the process suggests that when outlining works, it is not an isolated act, with a discrete product, but is an important part of an ongoing writing process, linked to all the other aspects of that process. And with electronic outlining, all these activities operate in the same file, allowing us to shift in an instant from an activity focused on notes to an activity at the highest level, considering structure in the outline. In order to move the material from a simple list to a complete document, we constantly cycle through different views of the evolving file: the outline view, the text view, the page layout view, and the hypertext or linked view. Because our electronic tools allow such quick switching from one view to another, they also help us see the extent to which writing is a complex process, made up of so many sub-processes that interact so unpredictably with each other that we can never hope to describe all the activities that go into a single book, much less prescribe a particular sequence of activities for a writer to follow when creating an outline. At best we can regard outlining as part of an extended set of conversations.

Several conversations drive the onrushing flow of these activities.

1. The first conversation is between the writer and his or her own artifact, the outline as it now stands, needing to be shaped by further thought; in this sense, the outline externalizes interior dialog.
2. The second conversation draws in the documents and databases the writer has consulted, debated, argued with, and borrowed from.
3. The third conversation is between the author, the emerging document, and its intended audiences, who, though absent, keep speaking up, raising questions, wondering, doubting, and generally provoking the writer to further effort.

When the outline appears in electronic form, it is just one view of a document that can also be looked at in unending scroll, as a word processing document, or in distinct pages, as a desktop publishing document, or again in a hierarchical outline, so we no longer seem to be looking at a single completed document, but rather a moment's snapshot, a brief recording or digest of the ongoing conversations.

In the workplace and the classroom, the electronic outline also dramatizes the social construction of knowledge, encouraging collaborative work among a team or class, foregrounding the processes of negotiation, problem-solving, reorganizing, and eventual agreement. As an artifact of these multiple ongoing conversations, then, the outline also acts as an object of contemplation, a temporary but material representation of the talk, allowing participants to step back for a moment, and reflect on the way in which they are all, jointly, participating in the creation of this shared document.

When we regard the outline in this way, we begin to see that each element in it--each heading, each section--functions as the collective writers' best attempt to answer a particular question, or set of questions from the various audiences. In addition, each element may send a message, as it were, to another part of the outline; the introduction to a chapter, for instance, presages the body, and the summary looks back to both. The document can be viewed as a hierarchy built out of these elements, and, similarly, any top level element can be seen as containing other elements, as its components. All headings at one level belong to that class of headings, and, in a formally designed document, each gets the same format as its peers, but each is also a distinct instance of the class, having its own data, or content. In all these ways, an electronic outline, particularly one with hypertext links within and without, is an object-oriented document, as a software engineer might describe it (Mazumdar et al., 1998; Price 1997a, 1997b, 1998). And when the document is presented electronically, the outline itself becomes a multi-level menu system, allowing users to traverse the material by various paths, interrogating the topic hierarchies and sequences, directing the conversation toward their own ends, creating their own meanings.

In large organizations we already see the creation and management of information moving in this direction, as software vendors perfect tools for flowcharting, color-coding and formatting the levels in a programmer's code so it looks like an outline, schematic diagramming, and visualization, as well as document building tools based on the Standard General Markup Language, or SGML, and its subset XML, which allow each team to create its own standard outline for a set of documents, displaying that template next to the document, in effect nudging the individual writers to observe the structural necessities imposed by the team's description of the ideal document of this type (in the document-type description, or DTD). By separating format from structure, these new electronic tools take outlining even farther from the "paper plan," and foreground the collaborative nature of the creation.

This sophisticated version of electronic outlining helps us understand structure in a new way--as an assemblage of message-sending objects in an evolving hierarchy, with each object having its own function in the virtual conversation for which the document acts as a continuous mediator. The structure of a document, then, can no longer can be considered a stable scaffolding. Viewed electronically, the emerging structure acts as a communicating system linking several societies, facilitating the complex social process of conversation (Price, 1997a, 1997b, 1998).

The impact of the medium

Each medium enables and encourages some activities, discourages others, and makes some almost impossible. As we work in the medium regularly, our common activities shape the types of documents that normally emerge, the ideas that we have about these documents, and the way we conceive of the rhetorical exchange and the process we have gone through. The electronic medium inherited a range of possible structuring activities but shifted the priorities, multiplied the number of passes, increased the interactions between activities exponentially. Similarly, certain design motifs continue, such as indentations and labels, but the rest of the formatting becomes visually more sophisticated, clarifying many aspects of structure that were not easy to spot before, and offering dramatic changes in what we see from moment to moment. We recognize traces of the idea of a document, but now it is more file than paper, so different attributes rise to the surface. The internal dialog becomes externalized in a new way, and other people join in. There is, then, no generic outlining, because medium is determinative in the definition.

We may pursue an idea through many media, but each process and each document emerges deeply stained by its own medium--and we humans seem to like it that way. Viewed in this light, the shift to a new medium and new tools--a new communication technology--is driven by a wide range of social, economic, and intellectual choices, but beneath all those decisions, I see a very human yearning for greater shared understanding.

A Brief Theory of Outlining

In order to reflect on our own activities as writers, students, and teachers, we need a rough theoretical model of outlining from which to argue our way forward. To help others clarify and articulate the issues I have raised, I offer these concluding remarks as a brief theory of outlining.

In the process of outlining we use an external medium to hammer out the structure of complex thought in verbal and visual form.

The outline itself is a momentary snapshot, recording a structural perspective on our writing up to that point, often incorporating what we have learned from research and what we have drafted so far, but presenting the topics in a visual hierarchy and sequence dramatized by design elements such as spatial layout in lines, paragraphs, laid out vertically and horizontally, and potentially reenforced by variations in labels, font, color, and size.

Compared to notes, running text, formatted text, and hypertext versions of the document, the outline, then, is simply one view among many of the evolving information. It may be consulted whenever we sense an internal inconsistency in our thought, add an idea that we had not anticipated, feel the need for clearer orientation in our research or drafting, or realize we must polish our thinking in particular locations, or throughout the document.

Because the outline fixes our ideas temporarily, we can interrogate and revise the organization at many scales, from focusing on a single point to canvassing the top level ideas. Such objectification of our thought allows interior conversation with our most recent concepts, unburdened by any need to remember everything in our heads.

Bringing common mental strategies to bear on the evolving artifact, cyclically, in many overlapping and interacting passes, we gradually unify and articulate our conception of the subject--learning as we go.

Adding the voices of people whose work we take notes on, we extend the conversation, using the outline to place their thoughts within our own evolving vision.

And practicing outlining with other people, we engage in collaborative brainstorming, analysis, and creation-if the medium can keep up with the flow. Outlining together allows each person full participation, but gradually erases claims to ownership, so that the process begins to seem simply an extensive, ongoing conversation, with shared results.

The media chosen--and to a lesser extent, the tools used to manipulate that medium--affect outlining by encouraging or discouraging, enabling or making difficult, the externalization of our evolving thought as we come to understanding a subject structurally.