writing

Mr. Karnofel

These and all other documents are exclusive property of Jeffrey A. Karnofel and cannot be duplicated or used in any way without the expressed, written consent of the author.

OCTOBER 12, 2014LIberty Union Local Schools

1

Table of Contents

How Do I Begin a Draft?.............................................................................................. page 1

Writing the Introduction.............................................................................................. pages 1-3

Thesis Statements and Topic Sentences................................................................... page 3-4

How Do I Plan and Organize My Writing?.................................................................... pages 4-7

Elaboration: How Do I develop Ideas?------------------------------------------------------------------------ pages 7-10

Choosing Appropriate Details..................................................................................... page 11

Unity, Coherence, and Transitional Devices.............................................................. pages 11-18

How Do I Write a Conclusion?------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ pages 18-19

2

How Do I Begin a Draft?

Getting Started:

The introductory paragraph of a paper can be a very difficult place to start writing. You might find it easier to begin with another part of your composition. Here are some guidelines for starting at a point other than the introduction:

Guidelines for Starting In the Middle

Develop the best ideas you have gathered from hour pre-writing and sharing techniques. Look at what you’ve written and start to play with the ideas. Reorganize, move ideas

around, delete unnecessary ideas, and strengthen weak sections by adding details. Think about where the ideas you have written might lead. Also think about how you might

lead into, or introduce, what you have already written.

The “starting-in-the-middle” technique can work for any kind of writing—expressive and imaginative, as well as expository. For example, imagine that you want to write a mystery story. You have a key scene in mind, and you know who your characters will be. The trouble is, you don’t know how you want to behind your story, and you’re not sure how to conclude it. You can begin writing with your key scene. Once you have that on paper, you can more easily go back and write an introduction telling who your characters are and how the plot begins. You may even think of new angles and plot twists after beginning in the middle.

Writing the Introduction

At some point, however, you will have to draft the actual beginning of your piece—the introduction. An introduction usually serves two purposes:

To catch the reader’s attention To suggest or state the main idea

If the piece of writing is a single paragraph, the introduction may be only one or two sentences long. If the piece is a longer composition or report, the introduction may be a paragraph or more in length.

A strong opening is crucial if you are to catch your readers’ attention. The first several sentences are especially important. You can experiment with the following techniques.

Startling or Interesting Facts An unusual fact can disturb, surprise, or inform your readers or make them curious. Notice how the writer uses the words alarming evidence to introduce the fact that more than half the adults in the survey do not exercise enough.

Example: Alarming evidence about the state of fitness—or lack of it—in the United States continues to mount. A Centers for Disease Control survey of more than 25,000 adults revealed that 55 percent do not exercise three times a week for a 20 minutes at a time, the minimum amount needed to provide health benefits.

Vivid, Detailed Description: A graphic, mysterious, or sensory description of a person or place can capture the reader’s imagination. Here, the author presents a vivid description of events and only at the end tells the reader when they took place.

Example: Everywhere, over the entire earth, volcanoes spewed gases into the sky. As heat and gas rose into the atmosphere, massive clouds formed, blotting out the stars. From one end of the globe to the other, lightning storms cracked and flashed. This is what the earth was like four and a half billion years ago.

3

Questions: A question can get your reader thinking and wanting to read on to find the answer. Notice how this question gets the reader interested in discovering more about the earth’s “cousin”.

Example: Does earth have a giant cousin in space? A team from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory has reported . . . a planet ten times more massive than Jupiter . . . about 90 light-years from earth.

Incidents or Anecdotes: A bit of retelling—of a story or one interesting event—adds human interest that can draw a reader into a piece. The conflict between neighbors told here would cause most reader to want more of the story.

Example: A man in Cambridge, Massachusetts, took his neighbor to court because the neighbor hadn’t cut his grass in fourteen years.

Quotations: A quotation can personalize and add interest to a piece of writing. The quotation chosen by this writer brings something inanimate to life.

Example: “A flute,” wrote and early nineteenth-century British critic, “is a musical weed which springs up everywhere.”

Writing Thesis Statements and Topic Sentences

Stating the main idea in your introduction can make it easier for the reader to understand what you are trying to establish, describe, explain, or prove. The first sentence in a paragraph or composition often establishes the main idea. The main idea of a composition is called a thesis statement; the main idea of a paragraph is called a topic sentence. Such a statement helps you organize your thoughts by summing up what you want to express, support, and develop. Thesis statements and topic sentences are most useful in expository writing.

Thesis Statement: A thesis statement presents the main idea of a piece of writing. It is almost always a single sentence in the introduction, but it can be split into two sentences or appear elsewhere if necessary.

A thesis statement not only tells what your topic is and how you will treat it, but it may also limit the topic, suggest a pattern of organization, or even reveal the tone of the piece of writing. It helps you clarify your ideas for yourself as well as for your readers. Suppose that you want to write an essay for your home economics class on cooking stir-fry vegetable using a Chinese-style frying pan, or wok. You might begin by writing the following thesis statement:

Topic Sentence: A topic sentence is to a single paragraph what a thesis statement is to a longer piece of writing: it states the main idea and suggests what will follow. Suppose, for example, that you are asked to write a paragraph explaining the importance of the balance of powers in the United States government.

You know that each of the three government branches—the executive, the legislative, and the judicial—holds some power over the others, thus making sure that no single branch becomes too powerful. You can sum up this main idea for your paragraph with the following topic sentence:

The balance of powers in the United States government is important because it ensures that no individual part of the government becomes too powerful.

The rest of your paragraph might then give examples to show how the three branches of the government check one another’s power.

How Do I Plan and Organize My Writing?

4

After you have chosen a topic and gathered some ideas, you need to organize your thinking and plan your writing. This will help both you and your reader understand what you want to say. Planning your approach and organizing ideas is like packing for a trip. To do it well, you must know something about where you are going. First you lay out everything you think you will take. After more thought, you might decide to leave some things out or add others.

The way you plan and organize your writing will be determined by the material you’re writing about, just as the way you pack for a trip is determined by your destination. For example, if you are writing a report on a subject you know only a little about, you must do a good deal of planning and research before you begin to write. On the other hand, if you are suddenly inspired to write a story, you might begin writing immediately and carefully revise your first draft later.

Organizing your writing is like asking, “Where do I want to go, and how do I get there from here?” Writers, like travelers, can ask themselves this question at any stage I their process, but they usually have some idea of their goal at the beginning. Some writers like to organize their ideas before they begin writing. They often use outlines to plan their work. Other writers like to get their ideas down on paper first, and work out the organization as their writing develops. Many writers use a combination of these techniques.

Types of Organization

Main Idea/Supporting Details: One way of organizing your ideas is to sort them according to whether they are the big ideas—the principal messages you want to convey—or smaller details that support and illustrate those ideas.

Suppose you have brainstormed ideas for a short piece about soccer, your favorite sport. You noticed that many of your ideas are about improving your skills, so this becomes the main idea. In your notes, you cross out phrases about equipment, rules, and other ideas not related to skills and circle the notes that do apply.

Chronological Order: Writers often present events in chronological order, or the order in which they occur. This organization is especially useful in telling a story or explaining a process.

One way of organizing ideas chronologically is to make a time line—a list of events arranged in the order in which they happened. For example, you could use the time line below to develop a paragraph about the invention of the bicycle.

Example: Soon the biggest of the boys poised himself, shot down into the water, and did not come up. . . . After a long time, the boy came up on the other side of a big dark rock, letting the air out of his lungs in a sputtering gasp and a shout of triumph. Immediately the rest of them dived in. One moment, the morning seemed full of chattering boys; the next, the air and surface of the water were empty.

Spatial Order: Visual details are often easiest to understand when they are described in spatial order, or according to their position in space. Suppose you want to explain how video cassettes are organized at a local store. The most natural way would be to proceed from section to section, starting at one end of the store and ending at the far end.

5

The simplest spatial-order descriptions are written from a single physical point of view, or vantage point. If you are describing a street and describe what you can see from there. If you decide to move down the street at some point—perhaps in order to describe what’s around the corner—make sure to alert your reader to the change by using transitions.

In the following passage, Jack London uses spatial order to organize his description of a complex landscape. He uses the transitions on one side, beyond the pool, and below as if giving directions to a hiker.

Example: On one side, beginning at the very lip of the pool, was a tiny meadow, a cool, resilient surface of green that extended to the base of the frowning wall. Beyond the pool a gentle slope of earth ran up and up to meet the opposing wall. Fine grass covered the slope—grass that was spangled with flowers, with here and there patches of color, orange and purple, and golden. Below, the canyon was shut in. . . . The walls leaned together abruptly and the canyon ended in a chaos of rocks, moss-covered and hidden by a green screen of vines.

Order of Importance, Degree, or Quality: Sometimes, especially in persuasive or informative writing, you may want to order details based on their importance, usefulness, familiarity, or some other quality. This order can be from most to least or from least to most of the quality. For example, to present information quickly for hurried readers, most news stories are written with the most important facts in the first paragraph and the least important facts at the end. On the other hand, if you were writing a letter to the newspaper editor urging people to fight pollution, you might build your argument from the least to the most important points to arouse emotions.

Notice how in the next paragraph, the writer begins with a little-known detail about the brain and ends with a fact almost everyone has experienced—that thinking can be hard work.

Example: The more than 100,000 chemical reactions that occur in the brain each second require huge amounts of the body’s stored energy. In fact, the brain can burn as many calories in intense concentration as the muscles do during exercise. That’s why thinking can feel as exhausting as physical workout.

Cause-and-Effect Order: When you hear a good joke, you laugh. This is a familiar cause-and-effect relationship. One event (the effect). At times, you may want to describe a chain of causes and effects in order to show clearly how they are connected. In the following paragraph, a writer explains the chain of events that produced much of the art we see today in public buildings.

Casual organization can help you explain things like how machines work or why the continents move. You can also use it in fiction. For example, you might explain why a character fears enclosed places by describing how she got lost in a cave as a child. Transitions such as therefore, as a result, and consequently can help you signal the causes and effects you are describing.

Classification: A common way to organize ideas is to classify, or group them, on the basis of size, color, value, or some other characteristic. The following writer classified music according to styles.

Example: Recently I’ve been listening to jazz, which, according to my father, is America’s outstanding contribution to the art of music. I enjoy ragtime, a piano style with an almost mechanical sound; the blues, especially the funky voices of Bessie Smith and Blind Lemon Jefferson; and the high-intensity sound of hard-bop groups like those led by Sonny Rollins and Horace Silver.

Some useful comparisons to signal classification are some, one kind, another, a third group, and others.

6

Comparison/Contrast: When you want to discuss the characteristics of two or more subjects, you may want to organize the details in a comparison/contrast framework. There are two basic ways to do this—by subject or by quality. You can treat each subject separately, discussing all of its qualities, or treat each quality individually, discussing how it compares in each subject. See how Maya Angelou uses a subject organization to compare graduating girls and boys.

Example: The girls often held hands and no longer bothered to speak to the lower students. There was sadness about them, as if this old world was not their home and they were bound for higher ground. The boys, on the other hand, had become more friendly, more outgoing. A decided change from the closed attitude they projected while studying for finals. Now they seemed not ready to give up the old school, the familiar paths and classrooms.

Transitions such as one, the other, on one hand, on the other hand, however, in contrast, similarly, and likewise will alert your reader to a comparison/contrast organization.

Part-to-Part Organization: For some pieces of writing you will not want to use a general organizing principle. Instead, you can connect each idea logically to the one that follows it. Notice how part-to-part organization works in the following paragraph.

Example: For centuries, the Chinese had taught that it was uncouth and barbaric to serve a large carcass that in any way resembled the original animal. In addition, it was considered impolite to expect a dinner guest to struggle through a dissection that could have been done before-hand, in the kitchen, out of sight.

. . .That belief dictated food size, which in turn suggested a kind of eating utensil, Chopsticks—of wood, bone, and ivory—were perfectly suited to conveying the precut morsels to the mouth, and the Chinese word for the implements, kwai-tse, means “quick ones.” Our term “chopsticks” is the English phonetic version of kwai-tse.

Elaboration: How Do I Develop Ideas?

Once you’ve gathered together a few main ideas, you’ve come a long way toward producing a piece of writing. However, to breathe life into those ideas, you need to develop, or elaborate, them. Your main ideas must be supported, explained, described, and even, sometimes, questioned. Elaborating your ideas is one of the most important tasks that you have as a writer.

Types of Elaboration

There are many types of details you can use to elaborate, or support, a main idea. You can choose among such possibilities as facts and statistics, sensory details, incidents, specific examples, and research. Sometimes an anecdote or a quotation can provide just the right support for an idea. You will need to select the types of elaboration that best fit our purpose, audience, and topic.

Facts and Statistics: Facts are statements that can be proven through observation, experience, consulting a reference work, or speaking with an authority. For example, the statement “Piranhas rarely attack people” is a fact. If you doubt the statement, you can easily check it in an encyclopedia. Statistics are facts about people, the weather, business, and so on, that involve numbers, such as, “In the United States, about 90 percent of high-school students attend public schools.” In the following paragraph find the facts and statistics the writer used to develop her main idea.

Example: Fibrillations of the heart, a rapid quivering of muscle fibers rather than the contractions needed to pump blood, is one of the leading causes of sudden death by heart attack. A

7

study . . . compared cardiac arrest victims treated by emergency medical technicians [EMTs] to those treated by paramedics. The eventual survival rate among those patients treated by EMTs was only six percent. This rate rose dramatically, to twenty-seven percent, for patients treated by paramedics.

Sensory Details: Words that appeal to the five senses provide sensory detail. They help develop an idea by telling how things look, sound, smell, taste, or feel. If you use exact, vivid sensory words, you can help readers experience the scene or event you are writing about. In the following paragraph, look for sensory details that help bring the scene to life.

Example: Early morning is a time of magic in Cannery Row. In the gray time after the light has come and before the sun has risen, the row seems to hang suspended out of time in a silvery light. The streetlights go out, and the weeds are a brilliant green. The corrugated iron of the canneries glows with the pearly lucence of platinum or old pewter. No automobiles are running then. The street is Silent of progress and business. And the rush and drag of the waves can be heard as they splash in among the piles of the canneries. It is a time of great peace, a deserted time, a little era of rest.

The most vivid descriptions show rather than tell what the writer means. They are concrete and specific rather than abstract and general. Precise details let hour readers figure out what an object, person, or scene is like. You can paint a picture of something without telling your readers how to understand it... In the following examples, notice how showing and telling create very different experiences for a reader.

Telling: Riley’s Place is a busy restaurant at lunchtime.

Showing: Waiters banged dishes onto bare metal tables; knives and forks clattered together; customers shouted above the din. It was lunchtime at Riley’s Place, and there wasn’t a seat in the house.

Incidents: Narrating or telling about an event can help you convey your idea or enlarge its significance. You probably use this technique in speaking, by making a statement and the telling a story to collaborate. The following paragraph begins with a topic sentence. The author then supports this idea with examples, including a story.

Example: Unfortunately, nature is very much a now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t affair. A fish flashes, then dissolves in the water before my eyes like so much salt. Deer apparently ascend bodily into heaven . . . . For a week last September migrating red-wing blackbirds were feeding heavily down by the creek at the back of the house. One day I went out to investigate the racket; I walked up to a tree, an Osage orange, and a hundred birds flew away. They simply materialized out of the tree. I saw a tree, then a whisk of color, then a tree again. I walked closer and another hundred blackbirds took flight. Not a branch, not a twig budged. Or, it was as if the leaves of the Osage orange had been freed from a spell in the form of red-winged blackbirds; they flew from the tree, caught my eye in the sky, and vanished. When I looked again at the tree the leaves had reassembled as if nothing had happened.

Examples: Sometimes a main idea can be supported with one or more specific examples. The main idea of the following paragraph is that toy designers search ceaselessly for the blockbuster toy that will become the rage, outselling all others. Notice how the writer has provided examples of such toys in the following excerpt.

8

Example: The life of the modern toy designer is an unending search for the next Hula Hoop, the next Rubik’s Cube, and the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Unfortunately, no one has yet devised a foolproof formula for predicting just what makes a new toy “fun.” . . . A single hot toy can bring in $100 million in retail sales in a single season; a hot toy that unexpectedly goes cold (remember the Cabbage Patch Kids? Teddy Ruxpin?) can help push a company into bankruptcy.

Quotations: Sometimes another person has said something so perfectly and eloquently that you’ll want to use it to add force and depth to your own words. Other times, a quotation can be used as an example, to illustrate a point you want to make. In the following paragraph, notice how the writer has used quotations.

Example: We are used to running until we run down, but the lesson of the mountains is that the rave is to the steady, not to the swift. “In time you’ll learn that, generally speaking, the way to hurry is not to hurry but to keep going.” Walker Colin Fletcher advises in his manual on the subject. “To this end I have two walking speeds; slow and slower.” With experience, the right pace for mountains becomes second nature. Take one step and all the others fall naturally into place. The greatest pride in walking in mountains, the badge of maturity, is not in reaching the summit but in reaching it in stride.

Once you have decided on the type of elaboration appropriate for your topic, there are several sources and techniques you can use to gather the information.

Questioning: Questioning is one of the best ways both to find and elaborate on ideas. When you question, you think about what you don’t know but would like to learn more about. Begin by simply writing the words who, what, when, why, and how at the top of a sheet of paper. Then come up with a list of questions of anything you wonder about your topic. As in brainstorming and free writing, try to let your mind roam freely as you write questions, and don’t evaluate any of your ideas in advance. Some questions may serve as guides for research; others will direct you to information you already have.

Exploratory Techniques: The exploratory techniques for finding ideas discussed in Writing Handbook 2 are also helpful in elaborating on those ideas. There techniques include recalling, using trigger words, free writing, invisible writing, listing, using a journal, brainstorming, and discussion.

Research: You may find you need factual information to elaborate on your topic. Two good ways of acquiring facts are using the library and interviewing. In the library, research your topic in the card catalog or computerized library catalog system. Discuss any special questions you have with a librarian. If your topic is current, you may know or know about people who might be able to answer questions. Set up an interview, and make a list of questions to ask. Take notes or tape-record your interview. The information you gain can be quoted or paraphrased in your writing.

Graphic Devices: Graphic devices can also be an excellent way to elaborate on your topic. Several of the devices discussed in Writing Handbook 9, such as clustering, charting, and using an analysis frame or idea tree, can provide helpful information.

Choosing Appropriate Details

How will you know what type of details to use in developing a piece of writing? The answer depends on the purpose and personal goals of your writing. If you main purpose is to persuade someone about a particular course of action, facts and statistics that support your viewpoint will be very useful. On

9

the other hand, if your goal is to describe accurately and precisely a particular person, place, or thing, then sensory details generally will be more appropriate.

In the following paragraph, notice how the writer chose appropriate details to elaborate on what her father loved.

Example: My father loved all instruments that would instruct and fascinate. His place to keep things was the drawer in the “library table” where lying on top of his folded maps was a telescope with brass extensions . . . . In the back of the drawer you could find a magnifying glass, a kaleidoscope, and a gyroscope kept in a black buckram box, which he would set dancing for us on a string pulled tight. He had also supplied himself with an assortment of puzzles composed of metal rings and intersecting links and keys chained together, impossible for the rest of us, however patiently shown, to take apart; he had an almost childlike love of the ingenious.

Unity, Coherence, and Transitional Devices

Good writing is a pleasure to read because it expressed ideas clearly and flows smoothly. It is unified and coherent. In a piece of writing that is unified, all the sentences or paragraphs support one main idea. Ina piece of writing that is coherent, all the sentences or paragraphs follow one another in a logical manner. The connection between ideas is strengthened by the use of transitional devices.

Unity in Paragraphs

You can achieve unity in your paragraphs in several ways. In most paragraphs, a good topic sentence plays a key role in establishing unity. If you relate all of the details in your topic sentence, your paragraph will be unified. If there is no topic sentence, unity is achieved when all of the sentences support the implied main idea or when the follow a logical progression, as in a narrative.

Related Details: In a unified paragraph, every detail supports the topic sentence or implied main idea; that is, all of the sentences in the paragraph explain the writer’s most important point.

In the following paragraph about the famous composer Richard Wagner, the first sentence establishes the main idea that the composer’s behavior is like that of a six year old, Notice that the details in the rest of the paragraph support that idea.

Example: He had the emotional stability of a six-year-old child. When he felt out of sorts, he would rave and stamp, or sink into suicidal gloom and talk darkly of going to the East to end his days as a Buddhist monk. Ten minutes later, when something pleased him, he would rush out of doors and run around the garden or jump up and down on the sofa, or stand on his head. He could be grief-stricken over the death of a pet dog, and he could be callous and heartless to a degree that would have made a Roman emperor shudder.

Unity is particularly important in writing description. When you describe a person or an object, you want to create a single unified impression. To do this, carefully choose details that contribute to that impression.

10

In describing a classic car, for example, you might brainstorm a list of details about the car. Then you would eliminate those details that don’t fit the impression.

Compare the two sentences below. Which one creates a unified impression?

1. The classic car had a glistening red hood, worn upholstery, and precise pin-striping along its side. 2. The reflective chrome, precise pin-striping, and glistening, red hood caught nearly everyone’s eye.

As you probably agree, the second sentence gives a unified impression because all the details point to the attractiveness of the car, whereas the first one introduces an unattractive element—the worn upholstery.

Implied Main Idea: The second sentence about the classic car gives an impression that is not directly stated. Sometimes the main idea of a paragraph also is not directly stated, but the paragraph is unified because all the sentences point to one idea.

Logical Progression: Often, in narrative writing, the main idea is neither stated nor implied. In the following paragraph, unity is achieved because each detail in the paragraph follows logically from those that preceded it.

Example: The nursery was silent. It was empty as a jungle glade at hot high noon. The walls were blank and two dimensional. Now, as George and Lydia Hadley stood in the center of the room, the walls began to part and recede into crystalline distance, it seemed, and presently, an African veldt appeared, in three dimensions; on all sides, in colors reproduced to the final pebble and bit of straw. The ceiling above them became a deep sky with a hot yellow sun.

Points to remember in writing unified paragraphs are summarized in the following chart. These guidelines will be useful for any type of writing that you do.

Guidelines for Achieving Unity in Paragraphs

If the paragraph has a topic sentence, check to make sure that the other sentences support it.

If your paragraph’s main idea is implied rather than directly stated, check to see that each sentence advances that idea.

If you are writing a description, make sure that the words you choose and the details you include create a unified impression.

If you are writing a narrative paragraph in which the main idea is neither stated nor implied, make sure that each sentence connects logically to the one before it and the one after it.

Unity in Compositions

Unity is important not only in individual paragraphs but also in whole compositions. To achieve unity in a composition, you should be sure that each body paragraph relates directly to the main idea of your composition. For example, suppose that you have written a three-paragraph piece about swimming as a form of exercise and have asked a peer reader to respond.

Paragraph one describes how swimming shapes up the body. Paragraph two describes how swimming improves long capacity and blood pressure. Paragraph three describes swimming accidents.

Your peer reader would probably tell you that your composition is not unified because the third paragraph is unrelated to swimming at a form of exercise.

11

Coherence in Paragraphs

A paragraph may be unified, but if the ideas do not flow clearly, it will not be coherent. In a coherent paragraph, the sentences all follow logically from one to another and the connection between ideas is obvious. Sentences can be organized in many logical patterns, including chronologically or spatially, by cause and effect or comparison and contrast, or by order of importance, degree or familiarity. To connect sentences, you can use transitional devices.

Transitional Devices

Transitional devices are words and phrases that connect ideas and can help you achieve coherence in your writing. There are transitions showing time, space, sequence, degree, comparison, and contrast, cause and effect, and other relationships.

Time When you are narrating or explaining a process that involves time, consider using some of the following transitions.

Transitions That Show Time:

after before finally

next then again

during the next day while

every time always meanwhile

Note the transitions showing time in the following paragraph. Without the transitions, the reader has no way of knowing how the events are related to one another and the paragraph loses coherence.

Example: During 1989, several Eastern European governments fell. First, the communist government of Hungary fell. Shortly after, Romania’s government fell. Then the people of Lithuania began to clamor for freedom.

Space: When you are writing descriptions, you should use transitions that help the reader picture the relationships among the objects you are describing. The following are just a few of the many spatial transitions that you might find useful.

Transitions That Show Space:

behind in front of on the left of

below over around

here in the center on top of

Think about how the transitions showing space in the following paragraph help you form a mental picture by telling you where each item is located.

12

Example: In the center of the ad is a woman drinking mile. Beside her is a man watching as if admiring her good sense. Above the photo, the word natural is written in capital letters. A small box below the photo contains nutritional information on milk.

Degree: When you are explaining the relative importance of items or ideas, you can use transitions such as the following.

Transitions That Show Degree:

first second mainly

more important less important least important

In the following paragraph, note that first and second are used to show importance, not time or sequence.

Example: There are many reasons to begin an aerobic exercise program. First, you will look better. Second, you will feel better. Perhaps even more important, you will tone your muscles. However, most important of all, you will derive enormous cardiovascular benefits.

Comparison and Contrast: When you are comparing and contrasting people, places, things, or ideas, you can use some of the following transitions to show the relationship between your choices of subjects.

Transitions That Show Comparison:

as than similarly

in the same way likewise also

either . . . or neither . . . nor

Transitions That Show Contrast:

yet but however

unlike in contrast instead

on the contrary on the other hand

Note how the use of transitions in the following paragraph clarifies one difference between Generals Grant and Lee.

Example: Ulysses S. Grant was described as having an abrupt manner. Likewise, he was not always described as a gentleman. On the other hand, Robert E. Lee was a figure of refinement, a model of decorum.

Cause and Effect: When you are describing a cause-and-effect relationship, you can use transitions to alert your reader to either the cause or the effect. Following are just a few of the many transitions that signal a cause-and-effect relationship.

Transitions That Show Cause and Effect:

because therefore since

13

consequently as a result so that

although for this reason if, then

Pay attention to the transitions in the following paragraph. Note that if the word consequently were missing, the sentence would not make sense and the paragraph would not have coherence.

Example: The first mechanical clocks were invented in Europe when a majority of the population could not read. Therefore, many people could not read even the simple numbers on a clock. Consequently, the clocks tolled or chimed the hour.

Other Relationships: If you are introducing examples, emphasizing a point, or adding more information, consider using the following words and phrases to make the relationship between the ideas clear and your writing coherent.

Transitions That Introduce Examples:

as for example for instance

like such as to illustrate

that is namely in particular

Transitions That Signal Emphasis:

Indeed in fact in other words

Transitions That Signal More Information:

in addition besides furthermore

moreover also as well as

similarly

Transitions That Signal Explanation:

For example that is in other words

Words and Phrases That Refer and Connect:

The relationship of ideas in some paragraphs is made clear by chains of words. These paragraphs do not rely on typical transitions such as first or consequently. Instead, coherence is achieved through the use of pronouns or synonyms.

Pronouns: Using pronouns to refer to a previously named noun in a paragraph is a good way to achieve coherence in your writing. Notice how forms of the pronoun it have been used to replace the word kitten in the following paragraph.

14

Example: A kitten is playing with its classical plaything, a ball of wool. Unfailingly, it begins to paw to the object, first gently and enquiringly with outstretched forearm and inwardly flexed paw. Now with extended claws, it draws the ball toward itself.

Synonyms: You can also achieve coherence by using a series of closely related words or ideas. Note how the related terms blight, evil spell, maladies, sickened, shadow of death, and illness link the sentences in the following paragraph.

Example: Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death. The farmers spoke of much illness among their families.

Coherence in Compositions

Transitional words and other devices are important for achieving coherence not only in paragraphs but also in compositions. You can link your paragraphs by using transitional words or by repeating, rephrasing, or using closely related words.

Transitional Words: In the following example, note the transitional word that strengthens the link between paragraphs.

Example: In Outward Bound, learning about yourself is the main objective. By being faced with the physical challenge, for example, or hiking across the desert for a stretch of eighteen hours, you can discover new strengths and abilities. You might learn that you can navigate will or simply that you can hike for an extended period of time.

Besides learning about yourself, you also learn how to work within a group. In Outward Bound, you might be roped to a group trying to scale the face of a steep mountain, everyone working together to accomplish the climb. Working within a team is a vital skill you will have to master in Outward Bound.

Repeated Words: Repeating an important word from an earlier sentence or paragraph can help your reader see the connection among your ideas. In the next selection, notice the repetition of flower.

Example: Carol Duke has built her life around flowers. Even when she is not in the garden at . . . her hilltop home in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, she is immersed in flowers—teaching, lecturing, designing, and arranging. She has created arrangements for clients as diverse as the New York City Ballet, the Chase Manhattan Bank . . . .

For Carol, a visual artist by training, arranging flowers is an ideal blend of her interests in art and gardening.

Rephrasing: Another way to link your paragraphs is by rephrasing a word or term that was mentioned earlier in the selection. Notice how the expression exercise just for sheer pleasure has been rephrased to link the paragraphs in the following model.

Example: “A runner’s biggest bugaboo is the stopwatch,” says Jim Couts a sports psychology consultant in Long Beach, California. “Many runners feel compelled to keep track of how long it takes to go from here to there, and as Type A personalities they’re uptight and under too much stress. They definitely need to learn to exercise just for sheer pleasure.”

15

The perfect place to experience such a refreshing is the swimming pool. A cool, clear pool becomes the perfect think tank—a refuge where you can improve your mental training without overworking your body, The water insulates and protects you from outside stimuli, allowing you to think without interruption.

How Do I Write a Conclusion?

Like songs, films, ballets, and basketball games, the writing you do needs an ending, or conclusion. There are many types of conclusions you can choose from; however, they all generally should do the following:

Wrap up the ideas in the work Follow logically from the introduction and body of the work Not introduce new, unrelated material Provide the writing with a feeling of finality Leave the reader with something to think about

Types of Conclusions

A conclusion, like an introduction, should support you writing purpose and personal goals. Typical methods for concluding your writing are presented below and on the following pages.

Restating the Main Idea: You can sometimes conclude a composition by simply restating the main idea.

Example: Dinosaurs ruled the earth for 150 million years, but 65 million years ago their reign ended. Although there are still questions about what caused their death, it seems clear that changes in climate played a role. The failure of the dinosaurs to adapt to a new climate brought about their downfall.

A similar way to conclude a composition is to summarize or restate the main ideas or topic sentences of the body paragraphs. Each sentence in such a conclusion summarizes the ideas from a different body paragraph of the composition.

Generalizing About the Information Given: You may want to conclude a composition by making a general statement, or generalization, about the information you have dealt with. The following generalization ties together information about three separate artists.

16

Example: Robert Frost didn’t publish his first book of poems until his late thirties, Vladimir Horowitz, in his eighties was still one of the greatest pianists on earth. Grandma Moses didn’t start painting until her seventies, and she was still going strong in her nineties. Obviously, age is no barrier to accomplishment in the arts.

Making a Prediction: In the following example, the writer concludes by speculating on the possibility of travel between stars sometime in the distant future. Notice his unusual, but effective, technique of adding a one-sentence “clincher” at the end.

Example: It is difficult to go to the stars. But it is not impossible. There are not one, but many, many future-magic technologies, all under intensive development for other purposes, that, if suitably modified and redirected, can give the human race a magic starship that will take us to the stars.

Asking a Question: Writers sometimes conclude by asking a question that sums up their opinions:

Example: Of all the causes that attract the attention of these young people, the plight of nature is one which may truly be a last call. Things wild and free are being destroyed by the impersonality of our attitude toward the land. What better way to fight the destruction of nature than to place in the hands of the young this powerful plea for a land ethic?

Making a Recommendation: Writers often conclude persuasive pieces with a recommendation for action.

Example: It is a terrible, an inexorable law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one’s own: in the face of one’s victim, one sees oneself. Walk through the streets of Harlem and see what we, this nation, have become.

Ending with the Last Event: Some narratives—pieces of writing that tell stories—simply end with the last incident.

Example: Oh, horror upon horror!—the ice opens suddenly to the right, and the left, and we are whirling dizzily, in immense concentric circles, round and round . . . . The circles grow rapidly small—we are plunging madly within the rasp of the whirlpool – and amid a roaring, and bellowing, and thundering of ocean tempest, the ship is quivering—oh God!—and –going down!