Transitions

Throughout this course, you learned techniques for writing effective sentences and combining ideas into well-organized paragraphs. First, you mastered the basic elements of complete sentences in unit 1. Next, you practiced combining ideas in unit 2. After that, you learned to connect ideas through the effective use of punctuation in unit 3. Now that you've mastered these techniques, you will learn how to use transitional words and phrases to signal relationships between ideas to your readers. Then you will practice the art of summary, which is also part of creating effective transitions in your writing.

The previous paragraph used transitional words and a summary to introduce the material covered in this unit. Read this article about organizing your writing with transitions, then complete the practice activities at the bottom of the page. You will use transitional phrases, which you can find answers to on the answer key. When you finish, test yourself by re-reading the paragraph above and identifying the transitional words.

The Function and Importance of Transitions

In both academic writing and professional writing, your goal is to convey information clearly and concisely, if not to convert the reader to your way of thinking. Transitions help you to achieve these goals by establishing logical connections between sentences, paragraphs, and sections of your papers. In other words, transitions tell readers what to do with the information you present to them. Whether single words, quick phrases, or full sentences, they function as signs for readers that tell them how to think about, organize, and react to old and new ideas as they read through what you wrote.

Transitions signal relationships between ideas such as: "Another example coming up – stay alert!" or "Here's an exception to my previous statement" or "Although this idea appears to be true, here's the real story". Basically, transitions provide the reader with directions for how to piece together your ideas into a logically coherent argument. Transitions are not just verbal decorations that embellish your paper by making it sound or read better. They are words with particular meanings that tell the reader to think and react in a particular way to your ideas. In providing the reader with these important cues, transitions help readers understand the logic of how your ideas fit together.

 

Signs that You Might Need to Work on Your Transitions

How can you tell whether you need to work on your transitions? Here are some possible clues:

  • Your instructor has written comments like "choppy", "jumpy", "abrupt", "flow", "need signposts", or "how is this related"? on your papers.
  • Your readers (instructors, friends, or classmates) tell you that they had trouble following your organization or train of thought.
  • You tend to write the way you think – and your brain often jumps from one idea to another pretty quickly.
  • You wrote your paper in several discrete "chunks" and then pasted them together.
  • You are working on a group paper; the draft you are working on was created by pasting pieces of several people's writing together.

 

Organization

Since the clarity and effectiveness of your transitions will depend greatly on how well you organized your paper, you may want to evaluate your paper's organization before you work on transitions. In the margins of your draft, summarize in a word or short phrase what each paragraph is about or how it fits into your analysis as a whole.

This exercise should help you to see the order and connection between your ideas more clearly.

If after doing this exercise you find that you still have difficulty linking your ideas together in a coherent fashion, your problem may not be with transitions but with organization. For help in this area (and a more thorough explanation of the "reverse outlining" technique described in the previous paragraph), please see the Writing Center's handout on organization.

 

How Transitions Work

The organization of your written work includes two elements: (1)the order you chose to present the different parts of your discussion or argument, and (2) the relationships you construct between these parts. Transitions cannot substitute for good organization, but they can make your organization clearer and easier to follow. Take a look at the following example:

El Pais, a Latin American country, has a new democratic government after having been a dictatorship for many years. Assume that you want to argue that El Pais is not as democratic as the conventional view would have us believe. One way to effectively organize your argument would be to present the conventional view and then to provide the reader with your critical response to this view. So, in Paragraph A you would enumerate all the reasons that someone might consider El Pais highly democratic, while in Paragraph B you would refute these points. The transition that would establish the logical connection between these two key elements of your argument would indicate to the reader that the information in paragraph B contradicts the information in paragraph A. As a result, you might organize your argument, including the transition that links paragraph A with paragraph B, in the following manner:

 

Paragraph A: Points that support the view that El Pais's new government is very democratic.

Transition: Despite the previous arguments, there are many reasons to think that ElPais's new government is not as democratic as typically believed.

Paragraph B: Points that contradict the view that El Pais's new government is very democratic.

 

In this case, the transition words "Despite the previous arguments", suggest that the reader should not believe paragraph A and instead should consider the writer's reasons for viewing El Pais' democracy as suspect.

As the example suggests, transitions can help reinforce the underlying logic of your paper's organization by providing the reader with essential information regarding the relationship between your ideas. In this way, transitions act as the glue that binds the components of your argument or discussion into a unified, coherent, and persuasive whole.

 

Types of Transitions

Now that you have a general idea of how to go about developing effective transitions in your writing, let us briefly discuss the types of transitions your writing will use.

The types of transitions available to you are as diverse as the circumstances in which you need to use them. A transition can be a single word, a phrase, a sentence, or an entire paragraph. In each case, it functions the same way: first, the transition either directly summarizes the content of a preceding sentence, paragraph, or section or implies such a summary (by reminding the reader of what has come before). Then it helps the reader anticipate or comprehend the new information that you wish to present.

  1. Transitions between sections – Particularly in longer works, it may be necessary to include transitional paragraphs that summarize for the reader the information just covered and specify the relevance of this information to the discussion in the following section.
  2. Transitions between paragraphs – If you have done a good job of arranging paragraphs so that the content of one leads logically to the next, the transition will highlight a relationship that already exists by summarizing the previous paragraph and suggesting something of the content of the paragraph that follows. A transition between paragraphs can be a word or two (however, for example, similarly), a phrase, or a sentence. Transitions can be at the end of the first paragraph, at the beginning of the second paragraph, or in both places.
  3. Transitions within paragraphs – As with transitions between sections and paragraphs, transitions within paragraphs act as cues by helping readers to anticipate what is coming before they read it. Within paragraphs, transitions tend to be single words or short phrases.

 

Transitional Expressions

Effectively constructing each transition often depends upon your ability to identify words or phrases that will indicate for the reader the kind of logical relationships you want to convey. The table below should make it easier for you to find these words or phrases. Whenever you have trouble finding a word, phrase, or sentence to serve as an effective transition, refer to the information in the table for assistance. Look in the left column of the table for the kind of logical relationship you are trying to express. Then look in the right column of the table for examples of words or phrases that express this logical relationship.

Keep in mind that each of these words or phrases may have a slightly different meaning. Consult a dictionary or writer's handbook if you are unsure of the exact meaning of a word or phrase.

 

LOGICAL RELATIONSHIP

TRANSITIONAL EXPRESSION

Similarity  also, in the same way, just as ... so too,
  likewise, similarly
 Exception/Contrast but, however, in spite of, on the one

 

hand ... on the other

 

hand, nevertheless, nonetheless,

 

notwithstanding, in contrast,

 

on the contrary, still, yet

Sequence/Order

first, second, third, ... next, then, finally

Time

after, afterward, at last, before, currently,

 

during, earlier,  immediately, later,

 

meanwhile, now, recently,

 

simultaneously, subsequently, then

Example

for example, for instance, namely,

 

specifically, to illustrate

Emphasis

even, indeed, in fact, of course, truly

 

 

Place/Position

above, adjacent, below, beyond, here, in

 

front, in back, nearby, there

 

 

Cause and Effect

accordingly, consequently, hence, so,

 

therefore, thus

 

 

Additional Support or Evidence

additionally, again, also, and, as well,

 

besides, equally important, further,

 

furthermore, in addition, moreover, then

 

 

Conclusion/Summary

finally, in a word, in brief, briefly, in

 

conclusion, in the end, in the final

 

analysis, on the whole, thus, to

 

conclude, to summarize, in sum, to sum

 

up, in summary

 

Practice 1:

Sometimes time or sequence are critical elements in explaining how something happened. If you have ever read a recipe, you are familiar with transitions such as, "before you add the egg, cream the butter and the sugar". There is nothing worse than adding an egg to butter and sugar without creaming…because they wonʼt blend correctly and your cake will come out dry.

For those of you who donʼt cook, think about some other task, like jump-starting a car.

Instructions such as, "connect the cables, but first make sure the engine is off", are not helpful. What works better is, "first, shut off your engine, and then connect the cables".

Think of some simple task that you could easily explain how to do to someone else.

This can be anything from how to make a sandwich, to how to catch a bus, to how to use file-sharing in a course. Write a short paragraph explaining these instructions, using transitions that express TIME or SEQUENCE of ORDER. You should have at least four sentences using four different transitions.

 

Practice 2:

Fill in each blank with an appropriate transition word.

NOTE: more than one correct choice is possible, but the word must reflect the relationship between the ideas (cause-effect, example, time).

The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle starts out as a non-criminal investigation where Holmes is trying to return a Christmas goose to its rightful owner; _________, the focus quickly changes when a valuable gem is discovered inside of the goose. ________

Holmes eliminates the thief as the owner of the goose by offering the crop to him along with a replacement goose, ______ he is not interested. _________ Holmes must track down where the goose came from. This leads him to another man who is on a similar hunt – and now Holmes has him criminal! _________, Holmes solves the mystery, returns the gem, and gets a man back on track towards an honest life.


Source: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 2.5 License.

Last modified: Friday, January 8, 2021, 2:01 PM