5 Flow Part 3: Transition With Words, Sentences, and Paragraphs
When Beth wrote about using transitions in your writing to enhance flow, she used a lovely metaphor to describe what transitions
do for readers. These important academic writing techniques, she argued, are
like bridges spanning a body of water. On one side: where you’ve been. On the
other: where you’re going. Imagine a person out on a
gorgeous summer day. Without a bridge, a pedestrian will at best get soggy socks that distract her and make her less likely to focus on what’s
important about her walk (the sky, the trees, the person she’s
hiking with). At worst, a path without a bridge will force the hiker to veer of
the trail, becoming lost and helpless to follow the nuances and curves of the
trail. Thus, just as we need the bridges to cross bodies of water and connect otherwise disconnected pieces of land, readers need transitions to cross through the path of the paper and connect otherwise disconnected ideas.
Transitions are words, sentences, and paragraphs that allow your reader to see the connections between various elements in writing. When we provide a sturdy foundation for
our readers to follow, it allows them to devote their attention to what’s important:
the contributions we’re making to the scholarly conversation with our ideas. When you add a sturdy footpath between ideas
for your reader, that’s when flow happens.
With that, let’s take a look at three different
types of transitions that you can employ in your writing to enhance flow:
words, sentences, and paragraphs.
Words that Transition:
As you are constructing scholarly paragraphs,
there are times when you will write sentences that flow in different
directions. To ensure that your reader follows your ideas within your
paragraphs, use transitional words to indicate the relationship that exists between
each idea.
Let’s say you’re writing a paragraph and you would like to you present
an additional example to support your claim. To show your reader you are adding
to your previous example, words like additionally,
as well as, and furthermore are extremely
helpful to a reader moving through your prose.
Or maybe you’re looking to show a counterexample to the one you just provided. If you add words like conversely, on the other hand, and otherwise to your sentences, your
reader will know how interpret the relationship between those two sentences. It’s
not imperative to use a transitional word to every sentence, but the more you
can create connective tissue, the more likely your reader will be to follow easily
along.
Sentences that Transition:
Sometimes it is necessary to dedicate an entire
sentence to help your reader transition between your ideas. The most common location
in your writing that will call for a sentence-long transition is when you’re
moving from one paragraph to another.
But wait, you might be asking yourself,
my Writing Instructor taught me that a topic sentence belongs at the beginning of my paragraph, not a transition. Yes, but you can use the hook back strategy
to launch you from your previous point into the next. The hook back strategy
allows you to mention what came before (the topic of the previous paragraph),
establish the connection between that previous idea and the next one, and then
provide a clear statement of what is forthcoming in the current paragraph (the
topic sentence).
So perhaps you are writing about the benefits of a new
Electronic Health Records system in your hospital. You have just finished your
paragraph about how EHR saves time, and now you’d like to move into a paragraph
about how medication errors are less-likely. You can create the bridge by
describing how these two paragraphs are connected. It might look like this, “In
addition to saving time, implementing EHR in my hospital has reduced medication
errors in our patients.” The clause at the beginning, before the comma, is the hook back. Not only does your reader
know how these two paragraphs are connected, but she also has a clear understanding about what’s coming next in your argument.
Paragraphs that Transition:
As you progress through your academic program at Walden, you will inevitably be asked to write papers that contain multiple
sections. Writing at this level requires high levels of complexity, which demands
that you are even more explicit and helpful with your transitions. Therefore,
it might be necessary to provide an entire paragraph that transitions from one
major section of your paper to the next. When
you’re writing large sections, you might consider approaching these sections as
mini-papers. Each section should have a
short introduction paragraph with context and a clear purpose statement, which introduces the section and
get the reader situated for the new information.
The next time you're writing an Integrated Literature Review, for example, slow down at the beginning of each new section and give your reader plenty of information. Say you're writing your ILR on ethical business practices, and you're moving from the paper's introduction into your first main section on corporate culture. You can lay the groundwork that will allow your reader to follow along by writing an introductory transition. You will want to make a connection in your first sentence like this "One of the most important themes in the literature regarding business ethics is creating a culture..." But now you can ease your reader into the forthcoming section by providing information about what will come next. How will the section be organized? What conclusions will you draw in this section? The more information your reader receives in the transition, the easier it will be for her to stay focused on your ideas.
So the next time you’d like to enhance the flow
in your writing, try these three transitional strategies. Even though the size
of the bridge changes in each instance, the function remains the same: helping
the reader to focus on what’s important by providing a sturdy footing.
This is the third part in five-part series on flow in academic writing. Tune in next week on Monday as we take a look at a fourth strategy: using clear, concise wording.
Max Philbrook is a Writing Instructor and the Coordinator of Social Media Resources at the Walden Writing Center. He enjoys the outdoors and even doesn't mind when his socks get soggy from hiking paths with no bridges. When he's not exploring or working with the amazing international scholars at Walden, he is completing his PhD in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Missouri.
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Ahh....who doesn't love a good metaphor! Water and bridges! I like the focus of this post pulling together transition words, sentences, and paragraphs. While important for course assignments, it becomes really important in the dissertation phase when working with such a large body of work.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to add that all three types of transitions you discuss also help the readers to skim for what they are looking for. (Besides dissertation committees and editors, few people read a dissertation word for word.) These transitions allow readers to focus in on what they are hoping to gain and learn from the writing. Well placed transitions help in this process as well as improving its readability.
Thanks Max!
Dr. Harland
Thanks for your comment, Dr. Harlan! You make a really important point--good transitions serve as "road signs" that let readers know where the writer is taking them.
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