Transition words are essential in English. They not only connect ideas, but can effectively introduce contrast, emphasize, show agreement or disagreement, present a shift, or convey the purpose, result, or conclusion. If your words were the building blocks of your message, the transitions are the glue binding them together.
Transition words are particularly important in professional emails. Why? Think about it. We’re all busy. Our inboxes are flooded with emails. We don’t have time to read through unstructured texts and spend time deciphering what is needed. Transition words will guide your reader and make it easy for them to act upon your message.
In this post, you will find professional transition words that you can use to enhance your emails emails. We selected the words and phrases that are commonly used in professional settings the and decided to leave out transitions that are mostly used in academic writing. The goal is that you learn how people actually write nowadays in most business emails.
Writing effective emails
Rule 1 for writing effective emails is that they are clear and concise. Many of us learned that to be a good writer, you had to use complicated words and write long sentences. This is not true anymore. At least not in a professional context. To be a good writer in today’s business world, your messages need to be short and to the point. Otherwise, your emails may never get read.
However, writing emails that are short and to the point doesn’t mean that the sentences need to be bare and soulless. You still need to use a wide range of email phrases and make sure that your ideas are all well connected – and that is where transition words come into play!
Why are transition words important?
Help your readers understand your emails
Add flow to your text
Clearly convey your organization or train of thought
Connect ideas together
Avoid choppy or jumbled sentences
Common transition words for emails
Transition words to add more information
Additionally
As well
Similarly
Other professional transition phrases to add more information: additionally, again, also, and, as well, besides, equally important, further, furthermore, in addition, moreover, then, too, in the same way.
Transition phrases to disagree
While I understand your point regarding…, I think…
On the other hand
Other transition phrases to express exception, contrast, or disagreement: but, however, on the contrary, still, yet.
Transition phrases to emphasize
I’d like to emphasize the importance of
This is particularly true…
Other phrases to emphasize or highlight importance: even, indeed, in fact, of course, truly.
Closing transition words
All things considered
Overall
Other phrases to wrap up your email: in a nutshell, in conclusion, in the end, on the whole, thus, to conclude, to summarize, to sum up, as a quick recap.
Time transition phrases
At the same time,
Lastly
Other time transition phrases: after, afterward, before, then, once, next, last, lastly, at last, first, second, etc., at first, formerly, rarely, usually, another, finally, soon, meanwhile, at the same time, for a minute, hour, day, etc., during the morning, day, week, etc., most important, later, ordinarily, to begin with, afterwards, generally, in order to, subsequently, previously, in the meantime, immediately, eventually, concurrently, simultaneously.
Keep improving your business emails
Check out these 150+ useful email phrases, download our free guide below, and contact Talaera if you would like to receive personalized training on business English communication skills.
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Talaera Talks – Transcript Episode 69
If you are learning English, including new English words and expressions will help you with effective communication. Remember to check out our other episodes on how to make small talk, how to deliver engaging presentations, how to speak English fluently, and many more: visit the podcast website. Listen to it on your favorite platform.
Paola Pascual 0:03 Welcome to Talaera talks, the business English communication podcast for non-native professionals. My name is Paola and I am co-hosting the show with Simon.
Simon Kennell 0:11 In this podcast, we’re going to be covering communication advice and tips to help express yourself with confidence in English in professional settings. So we hope you enjoy the show.
Simon Kennell 0:25 Welcome back for another Talaera Bit. My name is Simon and where ever you are, I hope you’re having a great day. We’ve had some really interesting podcasts in the last few weeks. And if you have time go through and check them out. What we’re going to be talking about today is something that we’ve discussed a lot and something that a lot of our students at Talaera ask us about. And that is email writing. Now, if you’re thinking, Ah, yeah, don’t worry, I know all about it, it’s fine. Go back, check out some of our podcasts around email writing, because I promise you, it will help you, we have an episode on writing clear emails with these concise writing tips. And I mean, I even go back and use that sometimes, we also have a great blog post on all these different helpful, helpful email phrases and words, there’s over 100. And we think it’s been downloaded over a million times. So we have a bunch of people that really find that helpful. So go check those out.
Simon Kennell 1:39 Today, we’ll be talking about really quickly, actually a very important part of email writing. And that’s how to transition when you’re writing emails. Now, I’ll always say this. Rule number one, when writing an email is clarity, and making sure that the email is concise. And we talk all about that in our other podcasts, and then a lot of our blogs is how can we make sure that we communicate in a clear way, and in a concise way, so we don’t need to spend an hour writing a huge long email that won’t be actually read.
Simon Kennell 2:22 So we have some different transitions I’m going to give you basically transitions for for different situations. So the first one is when you need to add more information, I use these three. So say we’re writing an email, and we come to the end of a short period. And we need to add some more information you can say, additionally, I think, what have you, you can say as well. And you can also use similarly. Now these are good because they’re very simple write, they’re simple, and it shows that we can just write whatever we need after these three, and we’re adding more information, it’s important that you use this transition because it helps the reader see that, okay, there’s an additional point here that I should focus on. It’s not a different point, which may become confusing for the reader, when you say Additionally, as well. Similarly, this helps the reader know that you’re still discussing that that same point.
Simon Kennell 3:32 Now, to disagree, there’s a couple here. I use these two all the time. And I actually think they’re pretty helpful, because disagreeing can be difficult. And when you disagree over written communication, you want to be a little bit more sensitive. So I could say, while I understand your point regarding… I think this may be a better way to do for XYZ reasons, right. So, this using this, while I understand your point regarding this, or while I get your stance regarding this, we’re using this right here, it’s showing that I appreciate that you have this viewpoint, but I think this may be a better tact, or this may be a better way to go about it. You can also use on the other hand, we should consider X, Y and Z as reasons not to do this or as reasons that may be challenging for this. And so you’re using these two here to again disagree, respectfully and politely over written communication.
Simon Kennell 4:46 Now, if you need to emphasize or you need to show the importance of something in your email, then I have two phrases that are think are important. So we start the email. We have a couple points, but then we want to really show importance for one of the points, I could say, this is particularly true for this point. With this point, we can see X, Y and Z, right. So when we’re saying this is particularly true, right, or this is particularly important, for this point, we’re emphasizing which we’re showing the extra importance for that one point, you can also even use the word emphasize, you can say, I’d like to emphasize the importance of XYZ. So there, you’re explicitly saying, which means you’re clearly saying that you’d like to emphasize, you’d like to really show them that this is an important point.
Simon Kennell 5:47 Now to wrap up the email, right, and to kind of give a final kind of generalization for the email. And to provide your big point, you could say, All things considered, I think it’s a great idea, we should just consider these points, right, all things considered, which means taking into consideration all of the previous points and all of the communication. I love using this at the beginning of the sentence, all things considered, I think it’s a great idea. You can also use Overall, I really appreciate that idea. And I think we should go forward with it. So all things considered, and overall are two great ways to wrap up the email.
Simon Kennell 6:32 Okay, so we want to focus on being clear and concise. And with that, we can use four different transition themes, right if we need to, right. So number one is adding more information. And we can use Additionally, as well. And similarly, number two is to disagree, while I understand your point, and on the other hand, number three is to emphasize and we can use that with I’d like to emphasize the importance of or this is particularly true for. And then the last one is to wrap up the email, we can use one like all things considered, and overall. So again, I’m going to say it one last time, the goal is writing clear and concisely. And with these transitions, you can really make sure that your reader fully understands your points. So check out these points. We have a blog to go along with it. Check out our two other blogs on business, email phrases, and concise writing for emails. And when you use those, put them together. And yeah, as always, keep learning.
Paola Pascual 7:50 And that’s all we have for you today. We hope you enjoyed it. And remember to subscribe to Talaera Talks. We’ll be back soon with more
Simon Kennell 7:58 And visit our website at talaera.com for more valuable content on business English. You can also request a free consultation on the best ways for you and your team to improve your communication skills. So have a great day and keep learning!
