Fine-Tune Your Essay with Strong Transitions

Once you've got a decent draft of your essay written, it's time to make it even stronger. One great way to do so is to fine-tune your transitions between paragraphs so that your ideas flow smoothly together. Learn how after the jump.

To understand why transitions are important, let's look at the structure of an essay. Essays exist to argue a point, commonly known as a thesis. They do so through a series of discrete paragraphs. Ideally, each paragraph contains one clear main idea and whatever outside evidence, quotes, or other material you use to develop and support that idea, which then supports the overall thesis of the essay. When the ideas in an essay are well-supported and clearly linked in a logical progression, the essay can make a powerful and cohesive argument. Instead of going Thesis, Point, Point, Point, Conclusion, your essay will run like this: Thesis, Point -> Point -> Point -> Conclusion.

So how do you link your paragraphs together? Use transition sentences at the beginning of each of your body paragraphs. Transition sentences link your paragraphs together into a strong progression of ideas, and they're simple to write. All you have to do is begin each body paragraph with some reference or mention of the previous paragraph and how it relates to the new paragraph.

Let's say, for example, that you're writing an essay arguing that breastfeeding is better for babies than formula feeding. One of your body paragraphs presents evidence that breastfed infants experience fewer ear infections and other illnesses. Your next body paragraph discusses the lower incidence of behavioral problems in children who were breastfed. To link these two paragraphs clearly, just begin the second paragraph with something like "Breastfeeding doesn't just protect infants from common childhood diseases, however; it also benefits their social development." By doing so, you make the connection between your ideas clear. The essay will read more smoothly and feel more coherent than it would if you neglected to transition smoothly from the first paragraph to the second.

Coherence in an essay is crucial. When you write an essay for a class, you're not really writing to educate your instructor, who (one hopes) is familiar with your topic. You're writing to demonstrate two things: your knowledge of the topic, and your ability to think about it critically. It's this ability to think that transitions help demonstrate, which they do by showing that you're able to follow information to a logical conclusion. The next time you revise an essay, take a few minutes to craft smooth transitions between your paragraphs, and reap the rewards.