Yesterday I bemoaned the sad fact that no one knows how to outline and alluded to the obvious fact that no one is going to learn by trying to outline using MS Word. I offered up my own version of the correct notation for varying degrees of subordination. However, at the time I could not find an authoritative source for notation beyond the second degree.

This has bothered me all morning, because– you know– I am all about authority! Just ask the experts!

Fortunately, the two crappy old grammar/writing books I looked at yesterday* are not the only crappy old books I have on the subject.

page 352 of Harbrace Handbook of English by John C. Hodges. 1941.  Harcourt, Brace and Company: New York, Chicago

I. major headings
   A. subheadings of the first degree
        1. subheadings of the second degree
            a. subheadings of the third degree
                (1). subheadings of the fourth degree

I could be wrong, but I remember MSWord offering a choice of the parenthetical subheading. Of course, that’s when I used MSWord back in the crappy olden days. Apparently MS has caught onto the sad fact that no one knows how to outline.

BONUS below


It’s only fair of me to note that the infallible source, Wikipedia, has a fairly decent entry on outlining which presents several subordination schemes down to the fifth and sixth levels. You would think that I should have checked Wikipedia first– think of the time I’d have saved! But look what I would have missed:

EE 440 Take Home Blue Book … 12/14/56

Apparently, Paul Somethingorother– whose name is penciled on the cover page of The Essential of English Composition (Espenshade, Gates, and Mallery, 1945)– was taking an English course at the same time he was taking an electrical engineering course in 1956. 

Note that Paul’s English text is eleven years old! English Composition sure did change slowly back in the crappy olden days, didn’t it?

You just don’t find BONUSES like such as these when you look at Wikipedia.

[Interestingly, the take home exam was folded and tucked away between the page of Appendix A, Glossary of Faulty Diction. “The use of like as a conjunction for as or as if is not good usage.”]

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* I failed to provide citation information for the two crappy old books shown in the previous post.

Left: The Writing of English (Complete Edition), Manly, Rickert, and Freeman. 1929. Henry Holt and Company: New York

Right: Prentice-Hall Handbook for Writers, Second Edition, Leggett, Mead, and Charvat. 1954. Prentice-Hall, Inc.: Englewood Cliffs, N.J.