There are, of course, exceptions to this, but as a general rule words or phrases like ‘however’, ‘in other words’, or ‘furthermore’ may puzzle the reader when they appear at the start of the paragraph at the very least, they may send the reader back to the previous paragraph and that is not the direction in which you want to be pointing your reader. It also means that transition words are often out of place in paragraph transitions precisely because they create such a tight relationship. This need for more fulsome transitions can mean that ‘this + summary word’ becomes ‘this + summary phrase’, where the phrase is a fuller indication of what was discussed in the previous paragraph. Paragraph transitions generally need to be more robust than those between sentences. I will also make two quick points about other types of transitions. However, I think not-A.’ The first example sounds like you might be unintentionally contradicting yourself emphasizing your intentions with a ‘but’ or ‘however’ lets the reader know what you are up to. I think not-A.’ and ‘There is plentiful evidence for A. Consider these simple examples: ‘There is plentiful evidence for A. Whenever we are disagreeing with ourselves, it is essential that we indicate this to the reader. Use transition words to indicate a change of direction in your text. Look closely at your use of causal words (‘therefore’, ‘thus’, ‘hence’) and make sure that they accurately reflect the relationship you are trying to convey.Ĥ. Therefore, I am going to study A.’, we are missing a chance to give an actual rationale for our research. When we overuse causal words, we often undermine the actual connection we could be making. If you are instead trying to make a more complicated connection, removing ‘also’ and adding a more substantive indication of that link will be far more helpful to the reader.ģ. (Both ‘moreover’ and ‘furthermore’ can be correctly used as intensifiers-where one sentence deepens the claim of the previous one-but they are so often used to indicate simple addition that I am including them here.) My first approach to a word like ‘also’ is to remove it if you are using it to say ‘here comes another related point’, it is probably unnecessary. Avoid unnecessary transition words. The transition words most likely to fall into this category are the additive ones: ‘in addition’, ‘also’, ‘moreover’, ‘furthermore’. So a simple principle: never leave a ‘this’ orphaned and alone.Ģ. There will be times, of course, when the reference is obvious, but generally the reader needs to have reference made explicit. We call this pattern ‘this + summary word’. This connection is…’. Without the summary word (‘connection’), we cannot tell whether the ‘this’ in the first example refers to A, to B, or to the connection between them. Contrast these two simple examples: ‘A is connected to B. The single most important way of linking your sentences is through clear reference. Here are a few key principles to help create clear transitions in your writing:ġ. Indeed, texts full of transition words may actually feel choppy because unnecessary transition words can obscure the true nature of the relationship among sentences. Transition words are easy and thus allow us to avoid the hard work of grasping the actual connections in our texts. This over-reliance on transition words is actually detrimental to our writing and blinds us to the possibility of using textual linkages to create more meaningful connections between sentences. Both strategies have a role to play, but novice writers, unfortunately, often see transition words as their only way of moving from sentence to sentence. Instead, we must focus on creating effective transitions between sentences, which we generally do in one of two ways: we use transition words or we use textual linkages. But creating short, choppy paragraphs only exacerbates the problem. When we do not know how to make smooth transitions, we are more likely to add in unnecessary paragraph breaks, imagining that starting a new paragraph will solve the problem. A lack of comfort with making transitions is one of the causes of the short paragraphs that so often afflict novice academic writing. Learning how to make effective transitions is essential to strong academic writing.
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