Basic but powerful grammar devices for cohesion and clarity

As the third in a series of pointers for crafting more readable and compelling compositions, I am posting in this week’s edition of the Forum the essay below, “Using repeated action and sequence words,” that I wrote for my weekly English-usage column in The Manila Times in early 2004. The discussion focuses on simple but powerful grammar devices in English for giving greater cohesion and clarity to writing and speaking. As I’m sure many of us already know, what these devices do is to represent or point back to ideas, elements, events, or situations presented or described earlier in the composition—thus sparing the reader or listener from the tedium of going through the same set of words and phrases all over again. The happy result is, of course, more concise and more lucid expositions.

Find out now if, in fact, you haven’t been using the whole repertoire of these repeated action and sequence words all these years. If so, it’s not too late to make them give punch and sparkle to your written and spoken English. (July 22, 2012)

Using repeated action and sequence words

For a much better handle on English usage, let’s go further back this time to the basics of English composition. Let’s review the uses of the so-called repeated action words and sequence words, those simple but powerful grammar devices for giving greater cohesion and clarity to writing.

Repeated action reference words. These words become standard equipment very early among English-language learners: “so,” “that,” “these,” “those,” “such,” “too,” “does,” “do,” and “did,” “the same,” “likewise,” “either” and “neither,” and “not.” What they do is to represent or point back to ideas, elements, events, or situations presented or described earlier in the composition. We must always keep in mind, though, that these reference words shouldn’t be used by themselves alone; they should be judiciously combined with important words or phrases previously used in the sentence or paragraph.

Let’s now review how these repeated action reference words work:

“So.” A statement might look like this in its full-blown form: “Everybody is learning how to use the personal computer. You should also be learning how to use the personal computer yourself.” By using “so” as a repeated action reference word, that repetitious statement can be made more concise and forceful: “Everybody is learning how to use the personal computer; so should you.”

“That.” Take a look at this overwrought statement: “He has been in turns a farmer, bus driver, newspaperman, communication specialist, and entrepreneur. The shaping of his unique world view by having been all of these things is what he considers the story of his life.” See how the reference word “that” makes short shrift of the repetitious statement and gives the sentence more drama: “The shaping of his unique world view by having been in turns a farmer, bus driver, newspaperman, communication specialist, and entrepreneur—that he considers as the story of his life.”

“These” and “those.” These two reference words efficiently emphasize enumerative sequences: “Coffee, toast, orange marmalade, and fried eggs—these are the only things I take for breakfast.” “A villa in Palermo, a castle in Austria, a resort house in Capri, a townhouse in Athens—all those the marauding government official had to give up when he was convicted of plunder.”

“It.” This familiar, all-purpose pronoun can be used as a reference word for inanimate things or concepts previously mentioned in a composition: “He ran for public office thrice and lost each time; it was the worst humiliation of his life.”

“Such.” This word is a highly emphatic recapitulating device: “She bought five books by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, three by Isabel Allende, and one by Pablo Coelho all at once—such was her fascination with Latin-American literature.”

“Too.” An excellent word for avoiding a repetition of similar attributes: “The woman’s vagabond lover was convicted of the grisly crime; the woman, too, got convicted.”

“Does,” “do,” “did.” These repeated action reference words eliminate the need to restate previously mentioned actions: “The groom loves riding horses; so does his bride.” “Not a few people want an intelligent president; so do we.” “She left right after midnight; so did I.”

“The same” and “likewise.”  These two work in practically the same way: “We ordered six cases of champagne yesterday; we want double of the same today.” “Our team worked overtime on New Year’s Eve; their team did likewise.”

“Either” and “neither.” These words efficiently recapitulate the acceptance or rejection of two previously mentioned choices: “Between the astral blue or apple-red sedan, either will do.” “Hong Kong or Singapore at this time of year? I want neither.”

“Not.” Negation of a statement can be done very efficiently by this repeated action reference word: “Most think that going to Baguio City at this time of year is great; not me.”

Sequence words. As we all know, “the former” and “the latter” are the two most common reference words for concisely showing the order of two previously mentioned elements, situations, and events. Both words imply a certain relation between those elements, situations, or events: “Christmas Day and New Year’s Day came and went, the former with a burst of piety and generosity, the latter with a bang and expectations of better things to come.” The reference word “former,” of course, refers to “Christmas Day,” and the reference word “latter,” to “New Year’s Day.”

We can see that repeated action reference words and sequence words not only tie up sentences and paragraphs neatly together, but also help emphasize the ideas being put forth in the composition. For beginning writers, this is as good a start as any towards concise, emphatic writing.

----------------
From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, January 9, 2004 issue © 2004 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved. This essay subsequently appeared as Chapter 55 of the author’s book Give Your English the Winning Edge © 2004 by Jose A. Carillo. All rights reserved.

Writing is a craft that requires precision in our word choices

Constructing grammatically and structurally correct sentences is a must in writing, but we all know that this isn’t enough to command and retain the attention of the reader. We need to come up with clear, readable, and compelling sentences for our expositions—a craft that requires precision in our choice of words as carriers of the thoughts and ideas that we want to share. English being a particularly rich language, with thousands upon thousands of words that mean more or less the same thing, we must develop the knack for choosing the word that best captures the sense that we want to convey. Obviously, this needs more than just a passing acquaintance with the definitions of words and their synonyms. Indeed, to be effective writers, we must make a continuing and purposive effort to widen our English vocabulary. For the wider and richer our vocabulary, the better we will be able to differentiate between the various meanings, senses, and nuances of words and their synonyms, and the better, livelier, and more interesting our writing will be.

It was to bring home this point that I wrote the essay below, “Using synonyms to enliven prose,” for my English-usage column in The Manila Times way back in January of 2004. I am now posting it in the Forum as part of a series of back-to-basics lessons in writing that I intend to present in this section in the next several weeks. (June 10, 2012)  

Using synonyms to enliven prose 

The French novelist Gustave Flaubert believed that only one word could give justice to a particular thing—“le mot juste”—and he obsessively searched for it before committing himself on paper. He may well have been right. After all, short of deliberately destroying the thing itself, there really isn’t much we can do to change its fundamental nature. Thus, in the English language, an “apple” will remain an “apple” till it’s eaten and digested, and “Eve” will remain “Eve” even after she has eaten that apple and is cast away from Paradise. Fortunately for us, however, there’s really no semantic law forbidding us to call an “apple” or “Eve” by some other word the next time it figures in our thoughts or on our tongues.

How dreary language, communication, and literature would be, in fact, if Flaubert’s prescription for words—like what is generally believed as the preferred French prescription for kissing—were to be followed to the letter! Then we would have to contend every time with the tedium of going through passages like this:

The apple is the popular edible fruit of the apple tree. The apple has the scientific name Malus sylvestris and belongs to the family Rosaceae. The apple is widely cultivated in temperate climates. The apple has more than 7,000 varieties but only 40 are commercially important, and the most popular apple variety in the U.S. is called Delicious. Apples are of three main types: cooking apples, dessert apples, and apples for making cider.

Using synonyms or similar words in place of a particular key word is actually one of the most powerful devices for giving zest and substance to language. Along with the other reference word techniques that we have already learned, they help ensure that our listeners or readers won’t tune us out because of boredom. Synonyms, while not exactly le mot juste, allow us to clarify meaning by focusing on the word’s specific attributes, thus throwing new light on the same idea. They make laborious, complicated explanations unnecessary; as in painting, well-chosen single words or short phrases are quick brush strokes that illumine ideas or clarify meaning and intent. As Peter Mark Roget, author of Roget’s Thesaurus, remarked in his introduction to the revolutionary book in 1852: “Some felicitous expression thus introduced will frequently open the mind of the reader to a whole vista of collateral ideas.”

Indeed, see what happens to the dreary apple passage above when we take Roget’s prescription to heart:

The apple, the mythical fruit often associated with the beginnings of the world and mankind, is the popular fruit of the tree of the same name. The fleshy, edible pome—usually of red, yellow, or green color—has the scientific name Malus sylvestris and belongs to the family Rosaceae. As a cousin of the garden rose, it has the same usually prickly shrub with feather-shaped leaves and five-petaled flowers. It is widely cultivated as a fruit crop in temperate climates. More than 7,000 varieties of the species are known but only 40 are commercially important, and its most popular variety in the U.S. is called Delicious. The fruit is of three main types: the cooking apple, the dessert apple, and the type for making cider.

This revised passage uses a total of eight apple synonyms and similar words: “popular fruit,” “tree of the same name,” “pome,” “a cousin of the garden rose,” “a fruit crop,” “species,” “variety,” and “the type”—each one capturing a new shade of meaning, aspect, connotation, or denotation of the apple and throwing the idea of the word “apple” in bolder relief.

We must beware, however, that synonyms can only establish contexts, not definitions; they may help illuminate discourse but not offer an analysis of things. For instance, in the revised apple passage, the synonyms used will be useful only to the extent that each of them is already understood by the listeners or readers. All of the apple-related words used—except “pome”—work very well as synonyms in the passage because they are of common knowledge; depending on the target audience, however, “pome” may need some clarifying amplification. (A pome, for those confounded by the word, is “a fleshy fruit with an outer thickened fleshy layer and a central core with usually five seeds enclosed in a capsule.”) The speaker or writer must ultimately decide if such amplification is needed.

When using synonyms, we also must make sure that their antecedent words—whether nouns, pronouns, or verbs—are clear all throughout. There is always the danger of overdoing the word replacements, particularly when the conceptual link between the original sword and the synonym is not strong enough. In that case, repeating the original word or using the obvious pronoun for it—“he,” “she,” “it,” “they,” or “them”—may be more advisable. Go over the revised apple passage again and see how the pronoun “it” for apple was used twice to provide such a link and continuity.

----------------

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, January 12, 2004 issue © 2004 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved.

Clarifying some key terms in the impeachment process

By now most everybody should already have a clear idea of what “impeachment” means. In the ongoing proceedings against Philippine Chief Justice Renato C. Corona, it means “charging a public official before a competent tribunal with misconduct with the view of removing him or her from office.” In this sense, from a layperson’s standpoint, Chief Justice Corona’s impeachment was “a done thing” when the House of Representatives endorsed eight articles of impeachment against him by an overwhelming majority last December 12, and what we have been witnessing for over four months now in the Senate impeachment tribunal is the prosecution’s efforts to have him convicted for his alleged impeachable misconduct.

I would have left this matter with nary a comment except that last Wednesday, while my son Ed and I watched the impeachment trial on cable TV, one of the defense counsels, Dennis Manalo, made this statement while cross-examining a witness: “If the witness your honor is so declared as hostile, we will impeach this witness… by proving his bias and prejudice against Chief Justice Corona and his active involvement in a well-planned and orchestrated effort to destroy the reputation of Chief Justice Corona…”

At this juncture my son Ed turned to me and said: “Wait, Dad, didn’t the defense lawyer make a colossal word-choice blunder just now? He said he will impeach the witness, but how could that be? Has he forgotten that it’s his client—Chief Justice Corona—who has been impeached and is the one on trial in this case?”

“No, son,” I explained. “That defense lawyer’s choice of the verb ‘impeach’ is actually precise and calculated, except that he used the word in another sense—‘to cast doubt on or to challenge the credibility or validity of the testimony of a witness.’ That’s definition #2 of ‘impeach’ by our online Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary.”

“Well, shouldn’t he have used another word to avoid confusing laypeople like me? Perhaps ‘discredit’ would have been much clearer.”

“Yes, absolutely! But you see, ‘discredit’ isn’t a legal term; ‘impeach’ is the precise legal term for what lawyers would want to do to an adverse witness.”

This confusion over the dual meaning of “impeach” brings to mind this related comment posted in Jose Carillo’s English Forum recently by member Eduardo (Jay) Olaguer about an apparently imprecise legal usage: “I’m so tired of hearing Filipino newspapers refer to judges or lawmakers as ‘inhibiting’ themselves, meaning that they withdraw from participating in a decision due to a conflict of interest. Why don’t they use the word ‘recuse’ instead of ‘inhibit’? Those who recuse themselves are known as ‘recusants,’ like the English Catholics who withdrew from attending Anglican ‘masses’ during the English Reformation.”

I agreed with Ed that “recuse” is the more precise word for that particular act of self-disqualification by a judge owing to conflict of interest. Indeed, my Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate defines the transitive verb “recuse” as “to disqualify (oneself) as judge in a particular case” and, more broadly, “to remove (oneself) from participation to avoid a conflict of interest.” In contrast, it defines the verb “inhibit” in the general sense as “to prohibit from doing something” or “to hold in check.” And in English law, from what I can gather, “inhibition” is “the name of a writ which forbids a judge from further proceeding in a cause depending before him; it is in the nature of a prohibition.” In civil law, on the other hand, it is “the prohibition which the law makes, or a judge ordains to an individual.” The element of self-disqualification is absent in both definitions.

It’s abundantly clear, however, that even without the element of self-disqualification, the verb “inhibit” has gained more traction than “recuse” in Philippine legal language, so I guess we’ll just have to stick to our own home-grown sense of “inhibit.” (May 19, 2012)

---------------

This essay earlier appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the May 19, 2012 issue of The Manila Times © 2012 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved.

Fused sentences are telltale signs of a writer’s inability to link ideas

Most everybody who knows basic English grammar can construct a one-idea sentence correctly, like “The woman fainted,” but not a few would probably fumble adding to that very same sentence the fact that she won the lotto jackpot and that’s why she went into a state of shock. They may come up with a sentence like, say, “The woman fainted she went into a state of shock she won the lotto jackpot.”* This, of course, is what’s known as a fused or run-on sentence—the result of improperly linking or wrongly punctuating two or more clauses in the construction.

Fused sentences go beyond the nuts-and-bolts of English grammar. They are telltale signs that the writer hasn’t mastered the craft yet of connecting ideas in English, so it’s very disturbing to see them not so infrequently in professional writing like news stories and feature articles. Indeed, seeing one of them some time ago in the lead sentence of a government news release prompted me to write the grammar critique below in my English-usage column in The Manila Times in May of 2011. In the essay, re-titled here as “Grammatical options for giving sense to fused sentences,” I offer four ways of making the annoying wayward clauses of such sentences achieve a clear and satisfying functional linkage. (April 22, 2012)    

Grammatical options for fixing fused sentences

Of the many varieties of flawed English that I encounter when reading news and feature stories, I consider fused sentences the most serious and the most annoying. This is because I’m pretty sure that they aren’t just run-of-the-mill grammar errors arising from haste or oversight but a disturbing sign of an inadequate grasp of how the English language works.

As discussed in my book The 10 Most Annoying English Grammar Errors, a fused sentence is formed when two or more clauses are improperly linked or wrongly punctuated, resulting in a fractured, badly articulated, and confusing statement. Of course, in an essay written by a college freshman, a fused sentence every now and then may be forgivable, but in the lead sentence of a major education news story?

Consider the following lead sentence in a report of a leading Metro Manila newspaper last weekend about the country’s preschool education initiative:

Manila, Philippines—The Department of Education (DepEd) will tap the services of about 22,000 volunteers to teach pre-school pupils expected to reach 2.5 million enrollees under its universal kindergarten program this coming school year. 

DepEd Assistant Secretary Tonicito Umali said each volunteer, who will work for three to four hours a day (,) will receive a monthly allowance of P3,000.

Like me when I was reading the lead sentence above, you must have stumbled in bafflement at midsentence. This verb phrase, “expected to reach 2.5 million enrollees under its universal kindergarten program this coming school year,” simply won’t connect to the preceding clause. The sentence suddenly got garbled and won’t make sense because the reporter—or perhaps the desk editor—had been so intent to cram into that sentence every bit of information in just one long uninterrupted burst of words (a tendency that, I regret to say, is very profound indeed among reporters and editors when constructing lead sentences for their news stories).

On inspection, we find that the problem with that sentence is that with neither rhyme nor reason, it fused the following two independent ideas:

1. “the Department of Education (DepEd) will tap the services of about 22,000 volunteers to teach pre-school pupils,” and

2. “enrolment is expected to reach 2.5 million under the DepEd’s universal kindergarten program this coming school year”

Note that these two ideas are actually independent clauses—grammar elements that, as most of us learned early in English grammar, need to link up properly and logically so they can work and make sense together. In this case, however, the fused construction was unable to do that basic sentence-combining task.

So how can that sentence achieve a functional linkage? Here are four grammatical options:

1. The relative cause option (using “who” as relative pronoun): “The Department of Education (DepEd) will tap the services of about 22,000 volunteers to teach the 2.5 million pre-school pupils who are expected to enroll under its universal kindergarten program this coming school year.”

2. The coordinate conjunction option (using “as” as conjunction): “The Department of Education (DepEd) will tap the services of about 22,000 volunteers to teach pre-school pupils this coming school year as enrolment is expected to reach 2.5 million under its universal kindergarten program.”

3. The subordinate conjunction option (using “because” as subordinator”): “The Department of Education (DepEd) will tap the services of about 22,000 volunteers to teach pre-school pupils this coming school year because enrolment is expected to reach 2.5 million under its universal kindergarten program.”

4. The total rewrite option: “The Department of Education (DepEd) will tap the services of about 22,000 volunteers to teach the 2.5 million pre-school pupils expected to enroll this coming school year under its universal kindergarten program.”

My personal preference is Option 4, for this total rewrite makes for a much simpler and more streamlined sentence—a far cry from the tangled original and decidedly more readable than the other three options above. (May 28, 2011)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, May 28, 2011 issue © 2011 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved.

-----------

*That fused sentence unfused: “The woman won the lotto jackpot, went into a state of shock, then fainted” or “When the woman won the lotto jackpot, she went into a state of shock and fainted” or “The woman went into a state of shock after winning the lotto jackpot, then fainted.” Any other possible way?

Dealing with the vexing inverted syntax of passive-voice sentences

We all know the difference between active-voice and passive-voice sentences, with most discussions about them revolving around the idea that as a norm in writing, the active voice should be preferred over the passive voice. This is because, the subject-verb relationship and the sentence structure in an active-voice sentence are decidedly simpler and and more straightforward than those in the passive voice sentence, as we can see in the following comparative constructions:

Active voice: “We pushed through with our plan despite the insurmountable difficulties.”

Passive voice: “Our plan was pushed through by us despite the insurmountable difficulties.”

We can see that the syntax of the passive-voice construction tends to become convoluted when it is forced to supply all of the equivalent grammatical elements of its active-voice counterpart; in particular, the phrase “by us” in the passive-voice sentence above sticks out like a sore thumb and makes the statement sound icky. Indeed, the grammar and structure of passive-voice sentences differ in remarkable ways from that of active-voice sentences, as I explain in the essay below that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in April of 2011 in reply to a member of Jose Carillo's English Forum who expressed bafflement over those grammatical differences. (April 8, 2012)

How the grammar of active-voice and passive-voice sentences differs

A Forum member, Nathan_Yell, asked the following very interesting grammar questions:

“What is the function of the prepositional phrase in the passive voice? Most grammar guides say that the object in the active voice becomes the subject in passive. Is the reverse true? Does the subject become the object in the passive? In the sentence ‘The rice is harvested by the farmers,’ isn’t the phrase ‘by the farmers’ a modifier of the verb ‘harvested’ and thus, an adverb phrase rather than an object? Or, is the term ‘object’ generally used to refer to anything that completes, complements or modifies the verb?”

Here are my answers to Nathan_Yell’s questions:

The function of the prepositional phrase at the tail end of a passive-voice sentence is to identity the doer of the action of the operative verb, as in the sentence you presented, “The rice is harvested by the farmers.” As we know, such prepositional phrases are an optional element in the passive-voice sentence, which actually can stand without them: “The rice is harvested.”

Now, does the subject of a sentence in the active voice become the object when the sentence is rendered in the passive voice? Before I answer that question, let’s first clarify what the active voice and the passive voice are in the first place.

By definition, a sentence is in the active voice when its grammatical subject performs the action of the operative verb, as in this form of the sentence you presented: “The farmers harvest the rice.” Here, the noun “farmers” is the grammatical subject, “harvested” is the operative verb in the active-voice form, and the noun “rice” is the direct object of that verb.

On the other hand, a sentence is in the passive voice when its grammatical subject receives the action of the operative verb, as in the original form of that sentence you presented: “The rice is harvested by the farmers.” Here, the noun “rice” is the grammatical subject, “is harvested” is the operative verb phrase in the passive-voice form, and the noun “farmers” is the doer of the action.

We can clearly see here that the grammatical subject of the active-voice sentence, “farmers,” is not the direct object in the passive-voice sentence. Instead, by becoming part of the prepositional phrase “by the farmers,” that noun has become what’s known as the object of the preposition. The object of the preposition, as I pointed out earlier, is optional to the passive-voice sentence. That sentence can therefore stand without it: “The rice is harvested.”

My answer to your second question is therefore a categorical “no.” The subject of a sentence in the active voice doesn’t become the direct or indirect object when the sentence is rendered in the passive voice. It becomes a different grammatical element known as the object of the preposition—just a noun or a pronoun that follows a preposition to complete its meaning, as in this passive-voice form of the sentence you presented: “The rice is harvested by the farmers.”

As to your third question on whether the phrase “by the farmers” is not an object but an adverb phrase that modifies the verb “harvested,” the answer is “yes.” It is functionally an adverb phrase that modifies the verb “harvested,” but grammatically, “the farmer” is also the object of the preposition “by” in that sentence.

Now to your last question: Does the term “object” generally refer to anything that completes, complements, or modifies the verb? No, definitely not; the term “object” refers to anything that receives the action of the verb, whether as direct object or indirect object. Anything that completes, complements, or modifies the predicate—not the verb—is a complement, which by definition is any added word or expression by which a predication is made complete, like the adjective “impertinent” in the sentence “The judge found the lawyer’s question impertinent” and the phrase “as her traveling companion” in “She chose him as her traveling companion.” (April 30, 2011)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, April 30, 2011 issue © 2011 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved.

Conclusion: Achieving greater mastery of paragraphing

This week’s edition of the Forum continues “Making Effective Paragraph Transitions,” the four-part essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in early 2006. The essay discusses the various techniques that a writer can use to effectively bridge a paragraph to the one preceding it—a process that works in much the same way as logically bridging adjoining sentences in an exposition.

Part I, which I posted in the previous Forum edition together with Part II, took up the most basic forms of paragraph transitions, namely (1) to simply repeat in the first sentence of a paragraph the same operative word used in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph, and (2) to use in the first sentence of a new paragraph a synonym or words similar to a chosen operative word in the last sentence of a preceding paragraph. Also taken up in the essay were the various task-oriented paragraph transitions.

Part II then took up the basic extrinsic or implicit transitional devices that use the pronouns “this,” “that,” “these,” “those,” and “it” in the first sentence of a succeeding paragraph to link it to the preceding paragraph.

This time, Part III takes up the use of the words “it,” “such,” and “there” as well as of prepositional phrases for making paragraph transitions, while Part IV discusses the most sophisticated form of paragraph transitions—the so-called  “deep-hook” paragraph transitions, which subtly work out their bridging logic by making themselves an intrinsic part of the idea being developed. (April 1, 2012)

Part III – Making effective paragraph transitions

We have already looked into several extrinsic or implicit strategies for making a transition to a new paragraph from the one preceding it. All of these strategies begin the new paragraph with a sentence that either repeats a key word or phrase used in the preceding paragraph, or else substitutes a summary word or pronoun such as “this” or “that” for that key word or phrase. This time we will look into the use of the words “it,” “such,” and “there” as devices for similarly making such paragraph transitions.  

To illustrate how these words work as transitional devices, we will use the same prototype first paragraph that we used in the previous column, as follows: 

“As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.”  

Strategy 5:  Use the anticipatory pronoun “it,” otherwise known as the expletive “it,” to begin the new paragraph. We know, of course, that many teachers of writing frown on this usage, claiming that it seriously robs sentences of their vigor. As the two examples below will show, however, this device can be very efficient as a paragraph transition:

As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan. 

It was past midnight at our Boracay cottage when my friend suddenly sprung the Palawan idea on me… 

or:

It was farthest from my mind that my friend would even think of a Palawan trip just when we were ready to fly to Manila…

It’s true, however, that too many expletives in a composition can be very distracting, so we must use this paragraph transition device very sparingly.

  

Strategy 6: Use the pronoun “such” in the first sentence of the new paragraph to echo an operative idea in the preceding paragraph:

As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan. 

Such was what happened to my best-laid plans after my friend chanced upon a Palawan tour brochure…

We must take note, though, that some grammarians find this use of “such” as a noun semantically objectionable. They would rather use “such” as an adjective or adverb to make such transitions:

As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan. 

Such a radical departure from our travel plans was very unpalatable, but my friend was so headstrong about it…

or:

            Such was my consternation about the Palawan idea that I actually considered going back to Manila without my friend…

Strategy 7: Use the pronoun “there” in the first sentence of the new paragraph to introduce the new idea that will be developed. See how effective this transitional device can be in effecting shifts in time, place, scene, or subject:

As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

There was a time when I would summarily reject unplanned trips like that…

or:

There was a very compelling reason why I didn’t want to make that Palawan trip, but my friend would hear nothing of it…

For the same reasons that they shun the expletive “it,” however, many teachers of writing strongly caution against this usage, arguing that it encourages lazy writing. Thus, as a rule for short compositions, more than one paragraph beginning with “there” would probably be too much.

We will now go to another type of paragraph transition, one that exhibits both extrinsic and intrinsic properties. The most common transitional devices of this type are the prepositional phrases used to begin the first sentence of paragraphs that set off events by order of occurrence, or to indicate changes in position, location, or point of view. Typically, these prepositional phrases are introduced by a preposition, but unlike such usual stock transitional words or phrases as “before,” “after,” and “as a result,” they carry specific information about the subject being discussed.

Some examples:

Prepositional phrases serving as paragraph transitions marking the sequence of events: “At 8:00 in the morning…”, “By noon…”, “At 6:00 in the evening…”

Prepositional phrases serving as paragraph transitions marking changes in position:  “At sea level…”, “Below sea level…”, “Above sea level…”

Prepositional phrases serving as paragraph transitions marking changes in location: “In Manila…”, “In Rome…”, “In London…”

Prepositional phrases serving as paragraph transitions marking changes of point of view in the same composition: “As a private citizen…”, “As a professional…”, “As a public official…”

To conclude our discussions on paragraph transitions, we will take up in Part IV the so-called “deep-hook” paragraph transitions—the type that blends so effortlessly and so unobtrusively with the developing prose that we hardly notice that the transition is there at all. (January 23, 2006)

Part IV – Making effective paragraph transitions

We will now discuss “deep-hook” paragraph transitions—the type that subtly works out its bridging logic by making itself an intrinsic part of the idea being developed. Unlike the usual conjunctive adverbs and transitional phrases such as “but,” “however,” and “as a result,” deep-hook paragraph transitions don’t call attention to themselves. They do their job so unobtrusively that readers hardly notice they are there at all.

To show what they are and how they work, we will use the same prototype first paragraph that we used to illustrate the other types of paragraph transitions:

“As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.”

Strategy 8:  Use the last word or phrase of the preceding paragraph as the first word or phrase of the next paragraph, then make it the takeoff point for developing another idea. This is the simplest of the deep-hook paragraph transitions and is most effective when limited to two or three words, such as “Palawan” in this example:

As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.           

           

An unplanned trip to Palawan was farthest from my mind at the time because I was so in a hurry to get back to Manila...

1.5

When it uses too many words, this type of paragraph transition may still work but it tends to be repetitive and clunky.

Strategy 9: Use an earlier word or phrase in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph as the first word or phrase of the next paragraph, then make it the takeoff point for developing another idea.

As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

           

Our tour guide had apparently spared no effort in foisting the outrageous idea on my friend’s impressionable mind...

Strategy 10: As the next paragraph’s takeoff point for developing another idea, use a word or phrase in a sentence other than the last sentence of the preceding paragraph. To establish its logic, however, this type of paragraph transition usually needs a multiple hook—perhaps two or more operative words or phrases from the preceding paragraph:

As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

That my friend should specifically insist on Palawan after already visiting several vacation resorts in the Visayas was terribly upsetting to me...

Here, the multiple hooks are “friend,” “several vacation resorts,” and “Visayas” from the second sentence of our prototype first paragraph, and “Palawan” from its last sentence.

Strategy 11: Use an “idea hook,” one that distills into a single phrase an idea expressed in the preceding paragraph, then use it as takeoff point for developing the next paragraph. This is the subtlest and most sophisticated form of paragraph transition of all, and its skillful use in compositions often indicates how good a writer has become in the writing craft.

Here are two idea hooks for a paragraph that will follow our prototype first paragraph:

As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

Giving in to my friend’s utterly capricious idea upset all of my well-laid plans for the remainder of that month...

or:

That spur-of-the-moment decision led to an experience so delightful that I vowed never again to so doggedly take the well-beaten path in my travels...

In practice, however, deep-hook paragraph transitions should not be used to the exclusion of the conventional conjunctive adverbs and transitional phrases. In fact, compositions that use a wide variety of paragraph transitions flow better and are generally more readable than those that use only one type. (January 30, 2006)

This ends the four-part essay on “Making Effective Paragraph Transitions.” I hope that it has clarified whatever lingering doubts you might have about how to properly bridge paragraphs in your expositions.

Achieving greater mastery of the paragraphing craft

By this time most of us should already be familiar with the English paragraph and could whip up one or several of them with great ease. The general concept for the paragraph that we normally follow is, of course, that it’s a collection of sentences that all relate to one main idea or topic and that have unity, coherence, and adequate development. This particularly applies to the typical expository paragraph, which starts with a controlling idea that the exposition then explains, develops, or supports with evidence. As we all know, however, not all paragraphs need a topic sentence; they could simply be indicators of breathing or structural pauses in narratives, dialogues, and explanatory statements that are marked for the purpose by a new, usually indented line (digital word processing, of course, now provides a stylistic device to even get rid of indentions, as in this very exposition that you’re reading now). Either way, paragraphs no doubt serve as functional transitions from one set of thoughts to another, and this is where many people—whether beginning writers or professionals who just want to set their thoughts down clearly and logically—get confused as to precisely how transitions between paragraphs should be done.

In “Making Effective Paragraph Transitions,” a four-part essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in early 2006, I extensively discussed the various techniques that a writer can use to effectively bridge a succeeding paragraph to the one preceding it—a process that I explained works in much the same way as logically bridging adjoining sentences in an exposition. This week, I am posting Part I and Part II of that essay here, with Part III and Part IV to follow next week. I hope that the discussions will help English writers and learners gain much greater competence and confidence in the paragraphing craft. (March 25, 2012)

 

Part I – Making effective paragraph transitions

Contrary to what some people think, making effective paragraph transitions is really not that difficult. This is because most of the familiar devices we use for linking sentences can serve as transitional devices for paragraphs as well. For instance, such linking words as “besides,” “similarly,” “above all,” and “as a consequence” can effectively bridge a succeeding paragraph to the one preceding it in much the same way that they can bridge adjoining sentences. It’s true that some experienced writers make it part of their craft to minimize the use of these highly visible paragraph “hooks,” but to the beginning writer, they are indispensable for interlocking paragraphs into logical, cohesive, and meaningful compositions.

Choosing a paragraph transition, of course, is largely determined by which of the following major development tasks the new paragraph is intended to do: (1) amplify a point or add to it, (2) establish a causal relationship, (3) establish a temporal relationship, (4) present an example, (5) make an analogy, (6) provide an alternative, or (7) to concede a point. Once a choice is made, it becomes a simple matter to find a suitable paragraph transition from the very large body of conjunctive adverbs and transitional phrases in the English language.

Before discussing the major types of task-oriented paragraph transitions, however, let us put things in better perspective by first looking into two of the most basic forms of paragraph transitions. One way is to simply repeat in the first sentence of a succeeding paragraph the same operative word used in the last sentence of its preceding paragraph, as the word “process” does in this excerpt from William Zinsser’s On Writing Well:

Ideally the relationship between a writer and an editor should be one of negotiation and trust…The process [underscoring mine], in short, is one in which the writer and the editor proceed through the manuscript together, finding for every problem the solution that best serves the finished article.

It’s a process [underscoring mine] that can be done just as well over the phone as in person…”

The other basic paragraph transition form is substituting a synonym or similar words for the chosen operative word. For instance, in the passage above, we can use the similar phrase “this kind of review” instead to begin the second paragraph: “This kind of review can be done just as well over the phone as in person…” This transition may not necessarily be better than the first one, but it has the advantage of giving more variety to the prose.

Now we are ready to discuss the task-oriented paragraph transitions.

Amplifying a point or adding to it. If we need to elaborate on an idea at some length, we can effect the transition to a succeeding paragraph by using whichever of the following transitional words and phrases is appropriate: “also,” “moreover,” “furthermore,” “in addition,” “similarly,” “another reason,” and “likewise.”

Establishing a causal relationship. When we want to discuss the result of something described in a preceding paragraph, we can achieve a logical transition by introducing the succeeding paragraph with any of the following transitional words or phrases: “so,” “as a result,” “therefore,” “consequently,” “then,” and “thus.”

Establishing a temporal relationship. This is the easiest paragraph transition to make. We can make the desired chronological order by simply using the following adverbs or adverbial phrases to introduce the succeeding paragraph: “as soon as,” “before,” “afterward,” “after,” “since,” “recently,” “eventually,” “subsequently,” “at the same time,” “next,” “then,” “until,” “last,” “later,” “earlier,” and “thereafter.”

Presenting an example. For this purpose, we can achieve a quick transition by using the following words or phrases to begin the succeeding paragraph: “for instance,” “for example,” “in particular,” “particularly,” “specifically,” and “to illustrate.”

Making an analogy. By using such words as “also,” “likewise,” “similarly,” “in the same manner,” and “analogously,” we can make an effective transition to a succeeding paragraph that intends to make a comparison with what has been taken up in a preceding paragraph.

Providing an alternative. When alternatives to an idea presented in a preceding paragraph need to be discussed, we can introduce them in a succeeding paragraph by using the following transitional words: “however,” “in contrast,” “although,” “though,” “nevertheless,” “but,” “still,” “yet,” “alternatively,” and “on the other hand.”

Conceding a point. An effective strategy to demolish a contrary view is to quickly concede it in a paragraph introduced by such transitional words as “to be sure,” “no doubt,” “granted that,” “although,” and “it is true.” The rest of the paragraph can then present arguments to discredit the wisdom of that contrary view.

For more complex compositions such as essays and dissertations, however, we will usually need more sophisticated paragraph transitions than the conjunctive adverbs and transitional phrases we have already taken up above. We will discuss them in detail in Part II of this essay. (January 9, 2006)

Part II – Making effective paragraph transitions

Because of its nuts-and-bolts approach to the subject, the preceding column must have given the impression that making paragraph transitions is simply a mechanical procedure, a matter of just tacking on a familiar conjunctive adverb or transitional phrase between adjoining paragraphs. This, as we shall soon see, is not the case at all. It just so happens that conjunctive adverbs and transitional phrases are the best starting point for discussing the subject, for they have a built-in and overt logic in them that can apply to a very wide range of situations. As we progress to the more complex types of compositions, however, we will need much less obtrusive and more elegant ways of bridging paragraphs into cohesive and meaningful compositions.

There are two general categories of transitions for bridging paragraphs: extrinsic or explicit transitions, and intrinsic or implicit transitions. Extrinsic or explicit transitions primarily rely on such familiar introductory words as “however,” “therefore” and “moreover” to show how an idea that will follow is related to the one preceding it. The various conjunctive adverbs and transitional phrases that we already took up in the previous essay belong to this category.

Transitions of this type are very handy and give paragraphs very strong logical interlocks, but when overused, as in legal documents that employ long strings of “whereases,” “provided thats,” “therefores,” and “henceforths” to drive home a point, their prefabricated logic can become very distracting, annoying, and unsightly. This is why it is advisable to minimize their use in formal compositions. For academic essays and dissertations, in particular, the usual suggested limit is no more than one extrinsic transition for every paragraph and no more than three for every page.

Intrinsic or implicit transitions, on the other hand, make use of the natural progression or “flow” of the ideas themselves to link paragraphs logically. Instead of using the usual conjunctive adverbs or transitional phrases, they effect paragraph transitions through a semantic play on key words or ideas in the body of the exposition itself. A sentence that performs an intrinsic paragraph transition usually (1) repeats a key word or phrase used in the preceding paragraph and makes it the takeoff point for the succeeding paragraph, or else (2) uses a synonym or words similar to that key word or phrase to do the transitional job. Part I of this essay already gave examples of this type of paragraph transition. At this point, we will now complete the picture by adding the pronouns “this,” “that,” “these,” “those,” and “it” to the list of basic implicit transitional devices, for these pronouns can often bridge adjoining paragraphs as effectively while minimizing the distracting overuse of the same nouns in the composition.

To better understand how intrinsic paragraph transitions work, let’s assume that we have already written the following first paragraph for an essay:

As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

Now how do we make an intrinsic transition to the next paragraph of this essay?

The task, of course, basically involves constructing an introductory sentence for that paragraph. We will now look into the various intrinsic transition strategies for doing this, from the simplest to the more complex ones.

Strategy 1: Use a summary word for an operative idea used in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph:

As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

The idea was at first totally out of the question to me. I was such in a hurry to get back to Manila because of an important prior engagement…

Strategy 2: Use the pronoun “this” for an operative idea in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph:

As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

This was actually not a very easy decision to make. I had to be in Manila later that week for a business meeting…

Strategy 3: Use the pronoun “that” for an operative idea in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph:

As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

That proved to be the most memorable part of our tour. Despite my misgivings…

Strategy 4: Use a more emphatic transition by using “that” to intensify an operative word or idea used in the preceding paragraph:

As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

That decision had very serious and far-reaching consequences for me. I missed an important meeting in Manila and lost a major account…

We will explore in Part III and Part IV even more effective strategies for effecting intrinsic paragraph transitions. (January 16, 2006)

In the next Forum edition: Part III and Part IV