Transition sentences: 100 examples for essays, reports and fiction

A transition sentence carries the reader from one paragraph or section to the next by joining two particular ideas. It names what they just finished, in a few words, and points to what comes next: “If the first survey was too small, the second was too late.” The 100 below are sorted by the relationship they express, from adding a point to concluding, with a set of scene transitions for fiction at the end.

Transition words such as however and therefore signal a relationship; a transition sentence spells it out, with content from both sides of the join. For single words and phrases, see the sentence starters; for the topic sentences that open a paragraph, the paragraph starters. In each example below, the bold half is the part that looks back. In the scene transitions, bold marks the anchor: the time, place or person that tells the reader where the new scene stands.

Transitions that continue a point

For a paragraph that adds to the last one: another reason, more evidence, the next step of the same argument.

1. Cost is only the first reason the ferry matters; the second is that it is the island's only link to the hospital.
2. If the first draft of the policy confused employees, the second confused their managers as well.
3. The same reluctance to explain herself follows Jane to Moor House, where she gives the Rivers family a false name.
4. The survey data tell one half of the story, and the interviews tell the other.
5. That was the first warning sign; the second came in the October audit.
6. Lower prices brought the customers in, and longer opening hours kept them.
7. The cleanup did more than take trash out of the river; it changed who used the riverbank.
8. Once the server move was finished, the team turned to the harder problem of the old data.
9. The lunch program fed more children in its second year, and it fed them better.
10. Speed was the obvious benefit of the new press; the less obvious one was cost.
11. Victor's guilt does not end with William's death; it grows with every death that follows.
12. The pattern holds in the third case, with one difference worth a closer look.

Transitions that contrast or turn

For a paragraph that cuts against the last one. Make the turn in the first half of the sentence, so the reader knows the direction has changed before the new point arrives.

13. The growers saw the price rise as a lifeline; the buyers saw it as a reason to look elsewhere.
14. All of this held true in the capital, but the provinces moved the other way.
15. On paper the new rota saved money; on the ward it cost each nurse an hour a shift.
16. The first set of results pointed one way, and the second set, collected a year later, pointed the other.
17. That explanation fits the 1990s; it does not fit what happened after 2008.
18. Where the old law protected tenants, the new one protects landlords.
19. The optimism of the opening chapters does not survive the family's move to the city.
20. For the managers, the reorganization was a success; for the night shift, it was a demotion.
21. So much for the theory; in practice, the schedule fell apart within a month.
22. Visitors came to the museum for the dinosaurs, but the curators wanted them to stay for the minerals.
23. Not all of the evidence is so tidy: two of the letters are undated, and one contradicts the rest.
24. The plan that looks efficient from the manager's desk looks like a longer wait from the patient's chair.
25. This is where the comparison with Boston stops being useful: Boston never lost its port.
26. Against these gains, the report sets one serious loss: the town's only full-time pharmacist.

Transitions that concede and answer

For moving from your own case to the strongest objection, or from the objection back to your answer.

27. It is true that the ferry loses money every winter, but so does every road on the island.
28. The critics are right that the sample was small; they are wrong about what that means.
29. None of this makes the new system perfect, and its weaknesses deserve a paragraph of their own.
30. A fair reader could object that the narrator has every reason to lie, and the objection needs an answer.
31. Granting that the delay cost money, the question is whether a rushed launch would have cost more.
32. There is a strong case for the other side, and it starts with safety.
33. The objection about cost has some force; the one about fairness has more.
34. Even if the merger saved what its supporters claim, it would not answer the question of whom it served.
35. That is the best case for the old policy, and it fails on its own terms.
36. Admitting the plan's flaws is not the same as abandoning it.

Cause and consequence transitions

For a paragraph that explains why the last one happened, or what followed from it. Check that the cause is real: a transition can make a sequence sound like a consequence when it isn't one.

37. The closure of the mill explains the first wave of departures, but not the second.
38. Because the forms changed in 2018, figures from before and after that year can't be compared directly.
39. This decision had a consequence nobody on the board had planned for.
40. With the bridge closed, the ferry became the only way across, and its queues grew to match.
41. The shortage of nurses had a predictable effect on waiting times, and a less predictable one on morale.
42. What caused the drop is less clear than the drop itself.
43. Two things followed from the price rise, and only one of them was intended.
44. The new rules took effect in January; by March, the first complaints had arrived.
45. Victor's decision to abandon the creature sets the rest of the novel in motion.
46. If the cause was the weather, the same drop should appear in the other regions, and it does not.
47. The result of all these cuts was a building nobody wanted to work in.
48. Out of that failure came the program that replaced it.

From idea to example

For moving from a general claim to one case that shows it, or from the case back out to the pattern.

49. The effect of the rule is easiest to see in a single household.
50. How the new rota worked in practice is clearest on one ward, over one week in February.
51. The general point becomes concrete at Lowood, when Mr. Brocklehurst has Jane stand on a stool in front of the whole school.
52. No chart shows the pattern as clearly as one district, Eastfield, where every school lost a teacher.
53. To see what the contract means for a single tenant, take its first page.
54. A small example makes the stakes of the rule clearer.
55. Abstract as this sounds, it decided the fate of one family farm in 1987.
56. The family that shows these pressures best is the Hallorans, whose story is worth following in some detail.
57. From that one case, a wider pattern emerges.
58. What is true of this warehouse is true, with small changes, of the other forty.

Time and sequence transitions

For history, process and narrative nonfiction, where the next paragraph moves the clock forward or runs alongside the last one.

59. The first year of the program went largely to plan; the second did not.
60. Before any of this could happen, the council needed the state's approval.
61. By the time the report came out, the policy it criticized had already changed.
62. Ten years after those photographs were taken, the same street looked nothing like them.
63. While the engineers argued about the design, the river kept rising.
64. Once the funding was secure, the harder work of hiring began.
65. That was the situation in 1990, and the next decade made it worse.
66. After the forms comes the interview, the stage most applicants get wrong.
67. After the vote, the fight moved from the council chamber to the courts.
68. Meanwhile, the tenants the plan was meant to protect were drawing up one of their own.

Transitions that compare

For moving between two subjects. In a compare and contrast essay, these sentences carry most of the structure.

69. The same problem appears in the second novel, and it is solved very differently.
70. Like the ferry, the island's clinic depends on a single grant.
71. The two cities started from the same place, and their paths split in 2004.
72. Set beside Rochester, St. John Rivers looks almost cold.
73. The same test applied to the older design gives a very different result.
74. What the first poem says in images, the second says outright.
75. Both companies faced the same shortage; only one of them planned for it.
76. Next to the 1950 census, the 2020 figures look less like growth than recovery.

Transitions between sections

For the end of one section or the start of the next in a long paper, report or book: one sentence that closes a question and opens the next.

77. So far, the evidence has been about cost; the next section turns to safety.
78. Having shown that the delays were real, this report now asks who was responsible for them.
79. Those are the facts of the case; what they mean is a separate question.
80. The first three chapters establish the problem, and the fourth begins to answer it.
81. With the history in place, the argument can begin.
82. That settles the question of when; the harder question is why.
83. The figures above describe what happened; the interviews that follow describe what it was like.
84. If the first part of this essay was about the heroine, the second is about the house she lives in.

Transitions into the conclusion

For the last turn of an essay. These tell the reader the argument is complete without the words in conclusion.

85. All of this points toward a single recommendation.
86. Given everything above, what should the council do?
87. The pieces of the argument now fit together.
88. It remains to say what all this means beyond the island.
89. Taken as a whole, the three cases share a cause that none of them shows on its own.
90. Which brings the essay back to the question it began with: who owns the river?

Scene transition examples

First lines after a scene break or at the top of a chapter. Each one tells the reader when, where or whose scene this is before anything happens.

91. Three days later, Mara was back at the harbor office, and this time she had brought the deed.
92. By the time Tom reached the farm, the rain had stopped and the yard was full of crows.
93. In London, nobody had heard the news yet.
94. Eleanor didn't speak to her sister again until the funeral, and even then only to ask about the car.
95. The second letter arrived on a Tuesday, in the same green envelope.
96. Across town, Detective Ruiz was having a worse night.
97. By spring, the house was empty.
98. It was dark when the train finally crossed the border, and Anna had stopped pretending to sleep.
99. That same evening, at the other end of the valley, the miller's son was packing a bag.
100. Afterward, nobody could remember who had opened the gate.

How to write a transition sentence

1. Name what the reader just learned

   In a few words, not a summary: “the cost,” “the first survey,” “Victor's guilt.” Use the same words the last paragraph used, so the reader recognizes the idea at once.

2. Choose the relationship

   Same direction, a turn, a cause, a step in time, a case, a comparison. The relationship decides the grammar: “If… the second” adds, “Where… the new one” contrasts, “Because…” explains.

3. Name what comes next

   The second half of the sentence states the new paragraph's point. A transition that only looks back (“That covers the cost.”) leaves the reader standing at the door.

4. Put the old first and the new last

   English sentences tend to put their weight at the end, so end on the new idea. “The ferry is also the island's only link to the hospital” lands on hospital; “The hospital link is another thing the ferry provides” lands on nothing.

5. Test it by taking it out

   Read the two paragraphs without the transition. If the join still holds, a single word may be enough. If it breaks, keep the sentence. If no sentence can join them, the paragraphs may be in the wrong order, or a step between them may be missing.

Transitions in essays and reports

Most transitions in an essay live inside the topic sentence of the next paragraph, which is the most economical place for them. Strunk's The Elements of Style (1920 edition) describes the options that still hold: the link to what came before can sometimes be made with “a mere word or phrase” in the topic sentence, but sometimes “it is expedient to precede the topic sentence by one or more sentences of introduction or transition.” The bigger the turn, the more words it usually needs: a word for the next reason, a sentence for a change of direction, a short paragraph between the main parts of a long paper.

A chapter transition has a different job from the ferry join above. It follows many pages rather than one paragraph, so it has to reorient the reader: say where the argument stands and what question comes next.

Headings don't replace transitions. A heading tells the reader that the subject has changed; the first sentence under it should still say how the new section relates to the last one, or the report reads as a stack of separate memos.

Moving between scenes in fiction

In fiction the transition is usually a cut: a blank line or a centered ornament, then a new scene. What the reader needs in the first lines after the break is an anchor: when this is, where it is and whose point of view we're in. Give all three within a sentence or two and the reader crosses the gap without noticing it. Leave them out, unless the confusion is deliberate, and the reader spends the first paragraph working out where they are instead of reading it.

Most chapter openings do the same job more quietly. Jane Austen begins Chapter 2 of Pride and Prejudice (1813) with a summary that moves the clock forward, “Mr. Bennet was among the earliest of those who waited on Mr. Bingley,” and Chapter 5 with a place and a new set of people: “Within a short walk of Longbourn lived a family with whom the Bennets were particularly intimate.” Both sentences settle the when or the where before anything happens.

Where you cut, and how much you skip, is a pacing decision as much as a transition; the pacing guide covers chapter and scene breaks, and how to write a scene covers where a scene should start. If you plan with scene and sequel, the decision at the end of each sequel is the bridge into the next scene, and the scene outline template has a line for it.

Mistakes that weaken transitions

• The empty signpost. “Moving on,” “Another thing to consider is” and “It is also important to note” announce a transition without making one. Replace them with the relationship itself.
• The signpost that misleads. A transition that promises a contrast (however, by contrast) or a cause (as a result, so) when the next paragraph delivers neither. Readers trust the signal and then have to reread.
• The full recap. Summarizing the whole last paragraph before starting the next one. Name the old idea in a phrase; the reader has just read it.
• A question every time. One rhetorical question (“But what about cost?”) can turn an essay. Five in a row make it sound like a quiz.
• A smooth join over a gap in the logic. A neat transition can hide a missing step. If the sentence works only because it's vague, add the step instead.
• In fiction, a break with no anchor. A new scene that opens on weather, a smell or dialogue and waits a page to say who, where and when.
• In fiction, too much bridge. Narrating the drive home, the dinner and the night's sleep to get the character to the next morning. Cut to the morning.

Weak joins are hard to see in your own draft, because you already know how the argument connects. In Strokes, you can ask the Strokes Assistant to review a section and point to the places where the move from one paragraph to the next is unclear.