Transitional Words, Phrases & Clauses^[1] Adapted from https://vocabularyhome.com/general/transitional-words-and-phrases/

Transitional words, phrases & clauses link sentences, points and ideas to earlier ones, helping to make your writing flow better and giving it a sense of structure. However, it is possible to overuse them, so try to use them where they are most appropriate.

Analogy

Transitional words/phrases/clauses help to link points or sentences together like a chain.

Without them, writing can seem disjointed (disconnected) like separate segments or a series of random sentences.

Remember that these are different to conjunctions, which link clauses together to make longer (compound, complex or compound-complex) sentences.

If, like me, you sometimes write very long sentences, this can make your writing less clear and easy to follow. Instead of using lots of conjunctions within the same sentence, you can end your sentence and start a new one with a transitional word/phrase.

To add information/replace ‘and’ you can start a sentence with:

Additionally,                         In addition,                         Also,

This also…                                Further,                                Furthermore,

Moreover,                                Then,                                Again,

Next

To replace ‘but’, you can start a sentence with ‘however’ or ‘yet’.

Here are some other words/phrases that can be used to compare/contrasting ideas/viewpoints: 

To show time or the order in which something happens, you can start a sentence with:

First,                         Secondly,                         Next,

Then,                         Before…                         Previously,

Previous to this,         After…                        Afterwards,

Finally,                        When…                       At the same time,

Later,                         Subsequently [later],

To give an example (to support an opinion or demonstrate a   point), you can start with:

For example,                 An example of this is…        This can be seen in…

For instance,                 In particular,                         As shown by…,

As we can see from/by… This is exemplified by…

To show a result (something that happens because something else has caused it to happen), you can start with:

Consequently,                 As a result...                         This has caused

This has created        This has meant                         Therefore,

Thus,

To sum up a point or argument, you can start with:

In summary,                 In conclusion,                         This clearly…

It is clear that…        Generally,                                 It seems…

To suggest possible reasons:

Perhaps…                         It is possible that …                 This may/could be because …

Possibly,                         A possible reason/motive for this could be…