Difference between Main and Sub Points in an Essay
Much like a chef in a kitchen, the writer of an essay has to become familiar with the many critical parts of a proper essay. Learning to organize a proper essay can help make a paper both easier to research, write and understand. Learning how to outline an essay is not difficult to learn you simply have to learn how to list main points and sub points in an organized manner and write about them with supporting facts.
Start with Your Main Points
When you embark on the writing process for an essay, there needs to be the initial planning stage, when you construct a list about the most important items involving your topic. These thoughts would be placed in an outline as the main points which support what you are writing about. Obviously there are going to be some points that are more serious than others. These main topics can be adjusted and pared down as you develop your essay more, in the writing process. These main points are going to be the most important guiding force behind the writing process.
Sub Points Support and Explain
Once you have the main points in your essay on your outline, you can then add sub point under each of these. As you develop through the writing process, sub points build up, support and explain the main points in your essay. There can be a unlimited number of sub points but it is good practice to keep them to three or four. Any more than that and it will be too easy for a reader to lose focus about your main points. Your sub points will provide your essay with personality. There are going to be a lot of different paths a writer can take to support a main point, the sub points are going to determine, if you paper expresses the viewpoint you wanted to write from.
Organization is the Key
Essay writing doesn't have to be a difficult process, because with a little organization you will find it flows easily. Develop a core group so main points that you want to expand upon. Make them broad enough to contain several sub points. As you list your sub points on an outline, make sure they support the main idea in a manner that agrees with the author. As the paper is written, each of the sub points will come to life, supporting the main points of your essay.