Effective Transitions

Transitions between paragraphs help the reader see the logical flow of ideas and how those ideas are connected. Writing effective transitions, however, can be challenging.

Read the following paragraph that appeared in an earlier post and possible sample transitions.

Another problem for minority defendants is that strong proponents of the death penalty are one-third more likely to harbor negative attitudes toward African-Americans (Young). Perhaps an even more alarming fact is that death qualified juries are more likely to convict than are juries that do not exclude death penalty opponents. Faced with a racially biased and conviction-prone jury, minority defendants are in the position of having to prove their innocence rather than having the state prove their guilt.

Possible transitions into new paragraphs.

• This racial bias, which persists even after the rewriting of laws following the 1973 Supreme Court decision, offers perhaps the best argument against the death penalty.

• Those who point to racial bias as a reason for opposing the death penalty lose sight of the devastation wreaked on families of murder victims and the threat that an escaped murderer, desperate and afraid of being recaptured, poses to all of society.

• Racial bias is not the only reason to oppose the death penalty; the very real possibility of executing an innocent person is an even greater reason. The two reasons are not contradictory--in fact, they work together. Of the twenty-four men sentenced to death in Florida and later exonerated, twenty were African-American. Thus, approximately 80% of the wrongly convicted were African-American--when only 20% of Florida citizens are African-American. [Note: I made these numbers up.]

• Proponents of the death penalty must come to terms with the very real fact of racial bias in our justice system and work to avoid it. Perhaps special review panels can be established for the sole purpose of monitoring racial inequities.

NOTE: All of these transitions refer back to the material contained in the last paragraph and then link it to the material in the new paragraph.

Other ways to write transitions:

• Sometimes, logical ordering is the only transition you need. If the next step in an argument is obvious, you may simply present the new paragraph.
• If you are writing about different types of things--like popular music, for example--it is permissible to simply write about a new type in each paragraph.

Example: As someone whose childhood was spent in the 60s and 70s, I prefer classic rock. I especially like the protest music that came out of the era because of its seriousness of purpose and concern for larger themes.

Disco, on the other hand, seems vapid to me. I dislike the mindless repetition of lines and the simplistic messages.

I am simply in the wrong demographic for rap and have never developed a taste for it. This failure to even listen to even a single rap song is sheer laziness on my part and an unwillingness to make a serious effort to understand something outside of my comfort zone. This is my loss: I have read that the Notorious BIG recorded songs that contain sophisticated word play and subtle ideas.

• Use obvious transition words like while, however, and thus sparingly.
• While it occasionally is acceptable to use transitions like secondly and thirdly, this usage is awkward and should be avoided as much as possible.