Can topic sentences be outlined in MS word after the full text has been written? I would like to use Word's outline feature to revise a paper. I need to work on the first sentences of the paragraphs. (There are no delayed topic sentences.) I want to keep the remaining subordinate sentences connected so that when I resequence topic sentences in outline view the rest of each paragraph comes along for the ride.
What I've tried so far:
- Seeing the entire paper slightly reformatted in outline mode but with all text visible isn't sufficiently focused to be useful for my purpose.
- I'm willing to assign styles manually to each topic sentence if needed. (I'll have to undo the assignments later since I'm using a journal template, so I'm willing take the reformatting only so far.) If I define a paragraph style I can set the outline level. But using a paragraph style doesn't allow me to separate each topic sentence from the remaining sentences in the same paragraph.
- I tried defining a character style to apply only to the topic sentences. But I see no way to set an outline level for a character style.
- Outline allows viewing of only the first line of each paragraph. But it's a technical paper with an unfortunate plethora of long words. As a lame make-do I tried making the page dimensions very wide, hoping for a longer first line even though seeing the start of some second sentences would be distracting. But the enhanced width doesn't carry through to outline view.
Ideas please?