What do you do at the end of the road? You’ve walked just as far as you can go, the earth stopping at your feet, the horizon stretching across your view. Across the way you see land– the next stop on your adventure. Only problem is, how do you get from here to there, logically and safely? Enter the bridge, a timeless tool that has helped people get from place to place. Transitions in writing are like your bridges, and at the Writing Resources Center we’ll help you build them piece by piece.
I’d like to think of transitions such as however, additionally, furthermore, nonetheless, and on the contrary to be simple, yet effective ways that bridge one idea to another. So often in writing there are ideas worth inserting in a paper, but not as many ways to make these ideas correlate. You don’t want your thoughts to sound choppy, but sometimes run-ons feel unavoidable. There’s a fine line we, as writers, must walk in order to achieve this textual fullness and cohesiveness professors expect.
At the WRC we encounter this more often than not, and clients can easily become frustrated. There is no cause to be discouraged, however, because there are many ways the tutors here can help you build the foundation of these bridges. When looking at points you’ve made throughout your paper, we look for a thread of commonality. If there’s any way you can relate one point to another, we will help you build your transition around that – leading to a logical and cohesive transition between ideas.
A major problem many people encounter is making their ideas flow together. You have your main points, the main things you want to say, but no way to connect them. When incorporating transitions into your paper, whether they be at the end of a paragraph, the start of a new one, or even somewhere in-between to connect ideas, they provide an avenue for everything to come together: bridge from place to place, idea to idea.
The WRC, as well as writing centers across the country, utilize various resources that help writers grasp and apply effective transitions into their papers.
- Our friends over at University of Texas at Austin have a great link that help writers craft strong transitions, and offer synonyms so you aren’t using the same ones throughout your paper that can be found here – http://uwc.utexas.edu/transitions/
- Another useful resource is provided by the University of Washington Writing Center, in which they offer pages of extremely effective statements that are sure to help you connect your ideas- https://depts.washington.edu/owrc/Handouts/Using%20Transitions%20Effectively.pdf
In short, (see what I did there) if you have contrasting points in a piece of writing that need to be bridged, tutors at the WRC look to uncover how these ideas parallel each other. All tutors here are extremely effective at highlighting differences, putting our best foot forward when understanding your train of thought, and working towards building the correlation that will help you get where you want to go – one step at a time.