The truth is, starting a sentence in an engaging manner can be difficult sometimes. This is also true when it comes to finding the perfect words or phrases to connect ideas. Once you get a good grasp of evidence sentence starters, transitional words, and use an essaychecker to proofread your paper, a reader will find your paper or essay irresistible from the beginning.
Why Use Sentence Starters?
Whether they are sentence starters for essays or other academic papers, let’s start by outlining the reasons for using special words or phrases to start sentences:
- It aids you to come up with more nuanced and richer ideas, instead of the regular habit of creating simple subject-verb sentence structure.
- When you use transitions and good starting words, you are able to link the ideas in your essays more effectively.
- These well-selected words make your academic and other papers sound more credible as well as professional.
- As mentioned earlier, well-chosen concluding sentence starters will keep your reader engaged and curious about what you are about to say next, rather than being easily predicted.
- Your writing will stand out from the pack if it uses transitional and linking words effectively at every necessary point.
- Your ideas and concepts are more coherent when you use transition sentence starters.
How Do You Use Sentence Starter Lists?
The major rule is to recognize the different purposes of transition words and sentence starters.
The different purposes and some of the highly suggested transition words/sentence starters include the following;
#1: To introduce an idea
Introduction sentence starters should be used to introduce an essay or writing, paragraph, as well as subsequent concepts or ideas in writing. There are tons of words that are great for this purpose. The list would include the following:
- In this paper…
- Here, we will discuss…
- The subject of discuss…
- …and so on
#2: To compare and contrast
If your intention is to compare and contrast, you should use transitional or sentence starters that are best suited for this purpose. This is a great way to carry the reader along as you start comparing or contrasting ideas. Also, it’s a good practice when you working on technology capstone projects, IT, engineering and others. Some good examples for this purpose include;
Compare
- Similarly…
- In comparison…
- In the same manner…
- Likewise…
- Just like before…
- Complementary to
Contrast
- Conversely…
- In contrast…
- However…
- Other than…
- On the contrary…
- On the other hand…
- Nevertheless…
#3: Adding ideas in your writing
Image credit: Karen Tyrrell
If you’re explaining steps in a process such as steps required to carry out a titration in a science laboratory, you would be better off using transition words for introducing the steps.
Examples of such words are:
- Next…
- Then…
- Another essential step…
- Subsequently…
- Another…
- Next to this…
- The following step…
Try using an online sentence checker to correct your writing.
#4: Sequence/ time
Word starters and transition words are also useful in narrating something that happened. In this case, you should use the appropriate transition words for this purpose.
Good examples would include
- First…
- Second…
- Third…
- Currently…
- Lastly…
- Earlier…
- Later…
- First of all…
- During…
- Eventually…
- Afterward…
To make sure you punctuate sentence starters correctly, use sentence quality checker that will suggest the needed changes right away.
#5: General sentence starters
Some words are indeed notable for being good sentence starters. The list will include the following: although, I would like to, first, meanwhile, therefore, subsequently, while, I would like to, moreover, in general, in addition, furthermore.
#6: Conclusion sentence starters
Good writers do not just end their essays or writings abruptly. Whether you are concluding an idea, concept, paragraph or the entire writing, using transition words that denote conclusion shows you are well organized and professional. It also portrays that you have a good grasp of the academic language.
- In conclusion…
- Lastly…
- To sum up…
- In summary…
- Finally…
- Hence…
- To conclude…
- In ending…
- In rounding up…
- In closing…
Other Transition Words and Sentence Starters
The six purposes above are not exhaustive of the different purposes to engage transition or word starters. Other purposes and their examples would include the following:
- To give examples: For example, for instance, as an illustration of, to illustrate this, here’s an instance, such as, exemplifies, shows, demonstrates that…and so on.
- To show prior or background ideas: Historically, in the past, customarily, over time, at first, primarily, originally, formally, prior to, previously…and so on.
- Time connectives: Lastly, finally, afterwards, after a while, following that, next, subsequently, to begin with, before long…and so on.
- Making emphasis: Emphatically, in essence, again, as a highlight, as an emphasis, to lay emphasis, it is important to state that, essentially, in reiterating this point…and so on.
If you want to craft a unique thesis, the best way to avoid plagiarism and improve the quality of your writing is to use a sentence checker.
How to Choose Transition Words
One of the tricks is to consider how a sentence fits with the previous one. You should also consider if the sentence is adding information, making emphasis, explaining a process, stating examples, or narrating a past event. If the sentence is intended for commentary, then use commentary sentence starters.
Now, it is important to mention this; avoid repeating transition words. Each purpose has tons of words you can choose from. So, avoid making your writing boring by excessively repeating sentence starters or transition words in your paper or essay.
Also, remember to place a comma after a transition word, followed by the subject. The key vocabulary or terminologies of your essay should not be played down as well. And, you should integrate signal words when necessary.
In order to improve your writing in the quickest possible manner, there are some examples of funny sentences in English that would help you remember grammar rules.
Finally, it is highly recommended that you take advantage of professional writing help to make your essay generally engaging and irresistible to the admission committee, not only in using good sentence starters but in all aspects.
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Challenges in Correcting Starter Sentences
Sentence starters, also known as sentence stems, are words to start a sentence for providing the best description of the upcoming idea and related information in the sentence or even in the upcoming paragraph. They are also the most important components for engaging in a group discussion. Writing the most suitable sentence starters for introduction of any idea or discussion is a very tricky and complex activity. You need in-depth knowledge and experience to create the most relevant and effective sentence starters.
A wide range of challenges come across while correcting good topic sentence starters in English writing such as:
Challenge #1 Right selection of sentence starter
Numerous sentence starters are commonly used in writing, group discussions, and audience engagement. Choosing the most suitable sentence starter in such a way that it serves the desired objectives is a challenging task. You need to take care of numerous factors such as connection, information, and types of writing coming up in the sentence or paragraph. For example, choosing “consequently” as a sentence starter for describing the impact of the previous action is good. But choosing “moreover” to describe the outcome of the previous discussion will not serve the objectives.
Challenge #2 Frequency of sentence starters in a writing
Another main challenge for writers, especially those who use English as a second language (EFL), is to maintain a moderate rate of sentence starters in writing. The excessive use of sentence stems would result in messy text, which will not provide clear meaning and smoothness in the flow of the writing. Thus, writers should choose the optimal ratio of sentence starters to make writing look professional.
Challenge #3 Establishing the correct link with the idea or abstract
The starter sentences are used to describe a wide range of states and abstracts such as ideas, explanations, listings, time series, conclusions, excitement, agreements, disagreements, introduction, professionalism, etiquette, and much more. It is a very challenging task that requires a huge level of expertise and experience to choose the sentence starter that establishes a precursor for the upcoming abstract or information of the text.
Challenge #4 Maintenance of the right tone in writing
The sentence starters develop the background and context of the upcoming description in such a way that the audience prepares their minds to focus on the upcoming content. Those sentence starters should be chosen carefully to maintain the right tone without any feeling of unprofessionalism, rudeness, or even superficiality. It is a challenging task to choose the most suitable sentence stem that maintains the correct tone of writing.
Challenge #5 Selection between traditional and modern sentence starters
The English language is a very resilient and adoptive one, which absorbs innovation and good changes easily. Numerous sentence starter phrases are also used in parallel with the traditional ones in different standards, styles, and types of writing. Whether you choose a traditional or a modern sentence starter in your writing is a challenging activity that requires experience and in-depth knowledge.
You can overcome all those major challenges in correcting sentence starters by using our professional-grade sentence starters tool online for free of charge.
