How to use transition words and phrases


How to use transition words and phrases
All transitional devices have different connotations, nuances, meanings. Before you use any of these words in your essay or dissertation, take time to understand its meaning and use to find the best match. Get a list of transition words and phrases at hand.

What are the transitional tools?

When writing your essay, you need to provide effective transition words and phrases to explain how each thought or sentence in it is related to others. Don’t take academic writing coherence for granted. It’s your important logical glue or reason to let readers easily move through all ideas in your text. How to achieve it? Students often turn to adverbs, conjunctions, prepositional phrases, or other essay connection to achieve coherence in their academic style writing. They can be used in all essay parts and even in abstract. Use examples of these transitional tools that serve different purposes in essays:
  • Contrast;
  • Illustrate;
  • Summarize;
  • Conclude.

What are their uses?

Transitional phrases can help you make your papers flow smoothly from one short paragraph to another in their logical manner. Use them in your conclusions or introductions, paragraph beginning or end. Paragraph transitions can be used in different types of essays because you need to present or sum up your ideas in their logical or clear flow. Transitional devices are most appropriate for argumentative or expository papers. But can be also used in reviews. What are their uses?
  • Use transitional words to connect your ideas or thoughts;
  • Use introduction transition words to present any major fact to your audience;
  • Use concluding words to round up any idea or result;
  • Transitional tools help readers progress from one significant argument to others;
  • They show important relationships within your ideas one sentence or paragraph or their support;
Different transitional types do different things. Everything depends if they show any illustration, comparison, summary, instance, or case.

Transitional benefits

Why use these words or phrases? They:
  • Help essays read more smoothly;
  • Allow readers to flow logically from one point to others;
  • Improve understandability or your logical organization;
  • Enhance connections between facts;
  • Indicate important relations.
Looking for any examples?
  • Finally;
  • In addition;
  • Similarly;
  • Contrary;
  • Specifically;
  • In spite of;
  • Subsequently;
  • Simultaneously;
  • Immediately.

Transitional positions

Most connection words appear in four basic places in sentences:
  • In the middle or after your subject;
  • In the beginning;
  • Between two sentences;
  • In the end.

What are their types?

Contrast or comparison connecting words are helpful when you write any compare/contrast paper, you can also use them to compare different facts in your argumentative or expository essays or other manuscripts. They’re helpful when contrasting different experiences in narrations. Use them to compare places, people, objects in descriptive papers.

Order or sequence transiting words

Sequence words are important in your narrations because you need to guide all readers through important events. Use these helpful devices in every section to clearly indicate what will happen next or communicate historical events in your informative papers. Do you need to summarize your plot? Use sequence words when you write about movies or books to provide readers with their plot context.

Example connecting words

How can they help you? Example transitional tools help you provide strong evidence in argumentative papers or add interesting details in narrative or descriptive essays. You can use many types to keep your academic writing interesting or avoid repetitions in longer documents.

Conclusion connection words

What is their purpose? They signal to readers that your essay is coming to its end. Every powerful or impressive concluding paragraph starts with your clear conclusion phrases to help you summarize all overall points.

What is their important role?

Good transiting phrases connect all paragraphs to help you turn disconnected writing into your brilliant academic paper. Don’t treat all essay sections as separate ideas because connections can help other people understand how they work together, build larger points, reference one another. Highlight connections between your corresponding paragraphs. Develop your significant points to readers by referencing relevant materials from previous paragraphs to submit your best-written assignments. Continue one section where another leaves off. Pick key ideas from your previous paragraph to highlight them in the next to create their obvious progression for your audience. It takes only several phrases to draw this connection.

How connecting words can help

Transiting devices are important for your successful academic writing because they improve connections between your paragraphs or sentences. They give your text its logical structure. They work as effective coordinating conjunctions by connecting different clauses, phrases, or words together to make your text easier to read and improve its coherence. Use all transitional tools with specific rules for punctuation. They relate new materials to your preceding thoughts or indicate your step forward in essay reasoning.

How transitional tools improve your essay

Want to improve your writing? Incorporate effective connecting devices because they enable your major points or ideas in essays to flow together logically. They make any academic paper become better. Without them, your written assignment will lack its unity or seem like a random assortment of different unrelated facts. How to determine if you need more connections? Read your paper to see if it lacks its flow or reasoning, seems choppy or unorganized because these are signs that it needs more transitional uses. If your essay is long or it presents many major points, don’t overlook the need for these important connections. Unity is the main quality of any impressive paragraph. It should stick to one point from start to finish, and every sentence should contribute to its central purpose.

Concluding thoughts

Transitional words are important to write any great paper. If they seem complex or you face any problems when incorporating them into your writing, turn to experienced professionals available on our website. They will help you benefit from transitional phrases. Learn to place them correctly.