Student Learning Commons: Making Connections: Choosing Transition Words

This handout lists commonly used transition words and phrases. The transitions are categorized by their functions and parts of speech to help you make the most appropriate choice.

	Subordinators	Conjunctions	Transitions	Prepositions
Addition		And	Also Furthermore In addition Moreover Besides that Not only that On top of that	Along with In addition to As well as
Cause & Effect	Because Since As	So For	Therefore Consequently As a result For this reason Hence/Thus Accordingly	Because of Due to
Example			For example For instance As an illustration	Such as Like
Opposition	Although Even though Though While	But Yet Nor	However In contrast Nevertheless On the other hand Conversely	Despite In spite of
Condition	If/Provided/Since Unless	Or (else)	Otherwise	In case of
Time	After/Before Since/Until When/While As/Whenever/Yet	As	Firstly/Secondly Thirdly/Next Then Later Finally	At/After/Before During Since Till Until
Similarity			In like manner In the same way Likewise/Similarly By the same token
Physical Relationship			Right/Left Up/Down	Above/Below/Behind Beside/Against On top of/Under Next to/At the
Emphasis			In fact In other words As a matter of fact

Handout created by Daniel Chang, SLC Graduate Writing Facilitator, 2014.