Transitions

By Judy Vorfeld

Transitional words and phrases

Have you ever won­dered how to use con­nect­ing words or phrases prop­erly? These tran­si­tional words and phrases are like bridges, and con­nect­ing parts of a sen­tence or con­nect­ing ideas. Take a look at some of them:

ADDITION
addi­tion­ally, and, also, again, and then, besides, equally impor­tant, finally, fur­ther, fur­ther­more, nor, too, next, lastly, more­over, in addi­tion, first (sec­ond, etc.), what’s more.

CONCESSION
any­way, yet, still, how­ever, at any rate, while I admit that…, nev­er­the­less, in spite of, even so, despite, of course, in any event, once in a while, sometimes

CONTRAST AND COMPARE
like­wise, by the same token, but, whereas, con­versely­but, yet, on the other hand, on the con­trary, nev­er­the­less, on the other hand, sim­i­larly, by com­par­i­son, bal­anced against, vis a vis, how­ever, meanwhile.

DIVERSION
by the way, incidentally

FOR EFFECT
clearly, def­i­nitely, extremely, obvi­ously, with­out a doubt, in fact, indeed, in any case, absolutely, pos­i­tively, nat­u­rally, sur­pris­ingly, always, for­ever, peren­ni­ally, eter­nally, never, emphat­i­cally, unques­tion­ably, cer­tainly, unde­ni­ably, with­out reservation.

EXAMPLES
to illus­trate, for exam­ple, for instance, in this case, in another case, in this sit­u­a­tion, take the case of, to demonstrate,

ILLUSTRATION
for exam­ple, for instance, for one thing, because, for, since, for the same rea­son, obvi­ously, evi­dently, fur­ther­more, more­over, besides, indeed, in fact, in addi­tion, in any case, that is

RESTATEMENT
in essence, in brief, as I have said, in other words, as I have noted, as has been noted, that is, namely.

SEQUENCE/TIME
after­ward, imme­di­ately, at this point, there­after, soon, after a few hours, at first, finally, then, sub­se­quently, later, pre­vi­ously, for­merly, in con­clu­sion, first, sec­ond, third, etc., next, then, mean­while, con­cur­rently, there­fore, next.

SUMMARIZING
after all, in brief, on the whole, sum­ming up, to con­clude, in con­clu­sion, as I have shown, in any event, in the final analy­sis, accordingly,in short, thus, as a result, con­se­quently, all things considered.

RELATED LINK:
Writer’s Web Transitional Words and Phrases

With inspi­ra­tion from The Gregg Reference Manual and Purdue University Online Writing Lab