The Frequency of Transitional Markers in Discursive Prose

Abstract

Composition textbooks are fairly consistent in their treatment of transitional markers, those recurring words and phrases that specify relationships between independent clauses. The markers promote clarity; they go at or near the beginning of clauses; they are to be used judiciously, not as factitious substitutes for internal cohesion. Hans Guth reflects the consensus when he writes, Apt transitional phrases help the reader move smoothly from one point to the next (Words and Ideas, 5th ed. [San Francisco: Wadsworth, 1980], p. 49). In the word lies the rub. What separates the apt from the inapt? How do professional writers use transitional markers? When they use them, why do they use them? When they omit them, why do they omit them? About these matters, the textbooks have little to offer. We admonish students to use the markers wisely even though we are not sure what wise use is. We offer lists and entrust their use to an intuitive sense of aptness. We feel that some students use too many markers while others do not use enough. But who is to say how much is enough? Vexed by uncertainty, I decided to assemble some quantifiable evidence. Using twenty-five essays in the seventh edition of College English: The First Year, edited by Alton Morris, et al. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), I studied transitions between terminable units (T-units), independent clauses along with any subordinate elements attached or embedded. (Titles of the essays are listed in the appendix.) I counted as T-units sentence fragments that began with capital letters and ended with periods. In my classificatory system, the following consists of five T-units:1