การใช้องค์ประกอบเชื่อม

Most transitions carry no information

• Furthermore tells a reader almost nothing: here is another sentence.
• Even in the cases where the effect is smallest tells them what relationship is coming.
• A transition should carry the relationship, not merely mark a boundary.

“Furthermore” is the transition equivalent of “And then another thing happened.”

What transitions are for

• Transitional elements are words or other elements — phrases, clauses, sentences, or paragraphs — that assist in creating coherence.
• They can also introduce evidence or indicate its relationship to other ideas or evidence.
• So a transition has two possible jobs, and the second is the one that earns marks.

A transition can be a whole paragraph

• The CED explicitly allows a transitional element to be a paragraph.
• In a long argument, a short paragraph whose only job is to turn the reasoning is legitimate.
• It is often the most elegant way to move from conceding to pressing your case.

Diagnosing your own transitions

• Delete a transition and read the two sentences together.
• If nothing is lost, the transition was decoration.
• If the connection now looks wrong, the transition was papering over a gap that was always there.

Transitions that do work

• Concession: the strongest objection to this is, this is true as far as it goes.
• Limitation: even where, in the cases that, to the extent that.
• Consequence: which means, so the comparison the objection needs, the effect of this is.