How to Write Better Essays

However, advertisers have developed still more effective forms of

manipulation, particularly in their exploitation of the sex, status and

prejudices of the consumer.

As this illustrates, the topic sentence is important to establish the

relevance of the paragraph you are about to write in the context of the

paragraphs that have already been completed, and to indicate to your

examiners which way you’re now going to take them. To do this you

need a ‘transition’ at the beginning of the sentence. This can be a short

phrase, like ‘As a result’, or a single word, like ‘Nevertheless’. In the

examples above, we used ‘As this suggests’ and ‘However ’.

In effect these work as ‘logical indicators’: they indicate what you

will be doing in the paragraph. You might be striking a contrast with

what you’ve just done in the previous paragraph (‘In contrast’,

‘However ’). You may simply be extending the argument you’ve already

developed in a slightly different way (‘Moreover ’, ‘Therefore’). Or you

may want to strengthen your argument by developing a point that rein-

forces it from a different angle (‘Similarly’, ‘Likewise’).

In view of their importance, make sure your transitions do what you

want them to do. Occasionally we find ourselves using weak transi-

tions, which create only weak links and a weak essay structure. The

worst are those we use for a list of points, words and phrases like ‘Also’,

‘Another point is’ and ‘In addition’. These have their counterparts in

subjects, like history, where we resort to time to order our ideas, which

we introduce with transitions like ‘After ’, ‘Then’ and ‘The next’. When

you find yourself using this sort of transition, just check to see what’s

happening in your essay. More often than not they will indicate that

you’re no longer discussing issues by developing a critical analysis.

Instead, you’ve slipped into a description of the issues or into a nar-

rative of the events.

The same warning about transitions doing real work applies to all

those times when we’ve found ourselves pressing a transition into

service to create fluency that simply isn’t there in the first place. If we

haven’t planned carefully enough, establishing clear intellectual links

between paragraphs, examiners will not be fooled if we try to paper

over the disjointed paragraphs with carefully chosen transitions. It will

always sound false and manufactured.

However, if your essay is clearly planned, not all of your paragraphs

will need transitions. There are going to be some that are set in the

context of a clearly sign-posted argument or analysis, and it’s all too

obvious what you’re doing. Nevertheless, don’t forget these are import-

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