The statement is false. Main ideas are identified within an outline.
An outline is a useful guide that a person uses before writing his/her essay in order to organize the ideas that are going to be discussed in it. A person can start working on an outline, one of the steps of the prewriting stage, after the topic of the essay has been chosen. Moreover, an outline is a helpful strategy for writers since it allows them to organize the main points of each paragraph and the type of supporting ideas that will also be provided in the essay in order to prove the main idea.
