Transitions between sentences

Transitions are bridges between what has been read and what is about to be read. Transitions help readers move from sentence to sentence. They also alert readers to more global connections of ideas—those between paragraphs or larger sections of text.

Skilled writers use transitional expressions with care, making sure, for example, not to use consequently when also would be more precise. They are also careful to select transitions with an appropriate tone, perhaps preferring so to thus in an informal piece, in summary to in short for a scholarly essay.

I don’t wish to deny that the flattened, minuscule head of largebodied Stegosaurus houses little brain from our subjective, top-heavy perspective, but I do wish to assert that we should not expect more of the beast. First of all, large animals have relatively smaller brains than related, small animals. The correlation of brain size with body size among kindred animals (all reptiles, all mammals, for example) is remarkably regular. As we move from small to large animals, from mice to elephants or small lizards to Komodo dragons, brain size increases, but not so fast as body size. In other words, bodies grow faster than brains, and large animals have low ratios of brain weight to body weight. In fact, brains grow only about two-thirds as fast as bodies. Since we have no reason to believe that large animals are consistently stupider than their smaller relatives, we must conclude that large animals require relatively less brain to do as well as smaller animals. If we do not recognize this relationship, we are likely to underestimate the mental power of very large animals, dinosaurs in particular. [Italics added.]

—Stephen Jay Gould, “Were Dinosaurs Dumb?”

Common transitions

Academic English: Using transitions

Exercise: Transitions

Related topics:

Transitions between paragraphs

Linking ideas clearly

Repeating key words with synonyms

Repeating key words exactly