The English Miscellany

Students create their own maps of connection "The creative journey has more departures than arrivals."   Students often have problems thinking about the flow of their ideas within a paragraph. This is not surprising as different thought-pathways occur at each (full) stop.  For instance, having expressed one idea, the next one might illustrate, supplement, qualify, or reverse the preceding sentence.  As a result, our sentence journeys quickly become very complicated. A complex argument often degenerates into confusion, and the sense of feeling lost. Writers and readers need signposts, and they need a map. In reality, writing involves weaving together a complex and dense thread of connectives and transitions. These words have the special function of signalling the direction of travel. They help to maintain a sense of purpose and direction. By using them effectively the writer is able to stick to a plan. Transitions help writing to flow . By thinking about th...

If you have been enjoying my book, The Art of Connection , you might be interested to read what Alexander Bain had to say on the topic of Adversative conjunctions : Certain of the Adversative conjunctions are used to indicate the mutual bearing of consecutive sentences. Some of the members of this subdivision are termed Exclusive, because they indicate the exclusion of some circumstances that would otherwise be allowable. "Else," " otherwise," are the chief examples; they occasionally introduce sentences, but owing to the intimacy of union that they express, their chief use is to unite clauses. Those termed Alternative sometimes form a link between two sentences; for example, or and nor. When nor is used without neither preceding, it is commonly in the sense of and not: " Nor would he have been mistaken;" " And he would not have been mistaken." We may have one sentence commencing with either and the next with or; and so with ne...