Ask OASISEngaging Writing: Incorporating Transitions
Last updated 4/21/2016
Visual: Walden logo at bottom of screen along with notepad and pencil background.
Audio: Guitar music.
Visual: “Walden University Writing Center. Your writing, grammar, and APA experts” appears in the center of the screen. Background changes to another notebook on a table, with a person sitting behind it, and a bright orange box. “Engaging Writing: Incorporating Transitions” text appears in center of screen in an orange box. Slide changes a mostly gray slide with a blue box in the center that is split into two. Above the blue box reads:
“DO: Transitions
Use the transitions to guide the reader from one sentence to the next”
In the blue box is the following:
On the left:
“Types
Transitional Phrases:
- Time: then, next, after, while, since
- Cause-effect: therefor, consequently, as a result
- Addition: in addition, moreover, furthermore, similarly
- Contrast: but, conversely, nevertheless, however
On the right:
Repeated key words and phrases:
- A key danger for patients in hospitals are falls. Falls can result in more injures than pose a threat to patient health.
Punctuation:
- Learning style can affect how well as person understands information; it also affects how well as person retains that information.
- There are many kinds of learning styles: auditory, visual, kinesthetic, and so on.
Audio: Using transitions can really help to engage your readers and keep them connected to your writing because without transitions, it can be very abrupt to jump from one topic to another. And transitions actually help to show relationships between your ideas. So, some of the different types of transitions might be transitions that show time frames; they might show relationships that are cause and effect; they might be transitions that show addition; or they might be some that show how ideas contrast with one another.
So, for example, in the category of time, there are the words: then, next, after, and so on. Cause and effect might be: because or consequently. In the category of addition, you might say: also, similarly. And then, if you had a category of contrasting, you might say: however or but. So you can see how these show different relationships.
The thing with transitions is if you’re going to use them, and especially if you’re going to use transitional phrases or words, use them sparingly and carefully because you really do want to make sure that you are accurately conveying the relationships that they show. So a lot of times, you can tell that, you know, a good transition also uses repeated words or phrases. And now I know I just told you, don’t use extra repetition if it’s not necessary. But sometimes a way to keep the reader engaged and keep the thought and concept flowing is to repeat just a word or a phrase that’s a keyword or phrase that helps the reader continue moving on. So for example here, we have:
A key danger for patients in hospitals are falls. Falls can result in more injuries that pose a threat to patient health.
Notice the word falls is repeated but kind of necessary to keep the reader moving forward. And also punctuation can help to keep the reader moving within the direction of the paper. Instead of using a period, for example, which is a little more abrupt, you might consider using a semicolon, which indicates that you have two complete sentences but the ideas are related to one another.
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