Writers build transitions
Transition sentences build bridges

Years ago I saw a sketch in an English book that showed a man crawling along a tight rope stretched between two cliffs. One cliff was labeled "what I used to think" and the other was labeled "what I think now." The rope was labeled "transition."

The only thing wrong with that image is that the tightrope makes the act of transitioning appear difficult. In truth, it's quite simple.

Transitions alone don't build bridges

Writers can embed transitional words and phrases such as these in a sentence:

• However

• In the same way

• Nevertheless

• Secondly

• On the other hand

but their mere presence does not automatically create a transitional sentence. Both ends of the bridge have to be indicated in the sentence for it to be classified as a transition sentence.

If I write:

However, Peter pays his bills.

you might infer that the previous thought was something negative about Peter, but you wouldn't know what.

Or if I wrote:

Peter, however, pays his bills.

You might infer I was contrasting Peter to someone else, but you wouldn't know who that someone is because only one end of the bridge is specified.

Writers bridge between ideas they know

No one can build a bridge without knowing what will be at each end. The builder must know where it will start from and where it will end. A similar principle applies to crafting transition sentences.

Students who prepare a comprehensive plan for their writing have all the ideas written down so that they know the order in which they will present the ideas. (An outline template is a good tool for such a plan.)

Then during composition, when they actually put their ideas into paragraphs, writers add the linkages that transform an outline into an essay. They write with knowledge of what ideas will be on either end of their bridges.

When teaching writing you cannot give students workbook exercises on transitions and expect students to carry their "knowledge" over to their writing.

Writers must know both the ideas and their order in the essay in order to write true transition sentences.

That's why a lesson plan like the one Scholastic recommends as the starting point for teaching persuasive writing makes no sense at all.

Transitions go only one way

When people communicate with each other in speech or writing, they begin with something that they believe their audience already knows. Then they move toward less familiar ground. That rhetorical pattern is logical and efficient.

A similar pattern is built into the pattern of English grammar as well. English language sentences are constructed with "given" and "new" information.

The given information, which is something readers know or could logically deduce, is in the beginning of the sentence. The new information that readers don't know, or that the writer thinks they don't know, is at the end of the sentence. The pattern of both grammar and rhetoric is

Given Information ----> New Information

As you might guess, transition sentences, which are rhetorical and grammatical entities, build from what has been given already to the new information.

Most sentences are transitional

Good writers connect one thought with the next unconsciously. They pick up the new information from the end of the previous sentence and use it as the given information in the next sentence.

The only sentences that are not transition sentences in this sense are the first and last sentences of a document.

Beginning writers can achieve that fluency by mechanically boosting the new information of one sentence to the given information position of the next sentence. Learn a subtle trick of knitting sentences that is more effective for writers than transition sentences and easier on the person teaching writing.