Frases Importantes

The Difference Transitions Can Make

You might be surprised by how much the effective use of transitional words and phrases can strengthen your writing. Transitions can act as "glue" that helps holds your ideas and your sentences together, and they can help take you and your readers smoothly and logically from one part of your essay to the next.

Example

Original Sentence: Succeeding in college often is a challenge for students. Most colleges provide services designed to help students. They include peer tutoring and personal counseling. Colleges need to provide more services to help students succeed.

Revised with transitions: Succeeding in college often is a challenge for students. Therefore, most colleges provide services designed to help students, such as peer tutoring and personal counseling. However, colleges need to do more to help students succeed.

The addition of just a few transitional words in the passage above helps the writer indicate how the different parts of the passage are logically related and strengthens the "flow" of the sentences.

Three Problems to Avoid

Transitional words and phrases help strengthen writing, but they can be misused. Below are three things to be wary of as you bring transitional words and phrases into your essays.

Make sure the logical connections are clear as you use transitions.

Because transitions indicate relationships between words and ideas, they can be misused if the relationship indicated by the transitional words is unclear or does not exist.

Example: George's wife stands at the window and looks out at the rain falling on the empty streets. For example, she sees a cat huddled under a table in the rain. ("For example" does not make sense here because the woman seeing the cat is not a clear "example" of anything in the first sentence.)

Example: George's wife decides to go out into the rain to get the cat. Consequently, George sits in bed reading his book. ("Consequently" does not make sense here because it is unclear how George sitting in bed reading is a consequence of the woman deciding to get the cat.)

Avoid the overuse of transitions.

Transitions are supposed to guide readers through your writing, but overuse of transitional words and phrases can have the opposite effect and can make your writing confusing.

Example: Writing an essay can be challenging. However, there are techniques that can make the process a little easier. For example, taking plenty of notes on the subject can help the writer generate ideas. Therefore, note-taking is an important "pre-writing" strategy. In addition, some people "free-write,"

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