Grammar Girl here, today Bonnie Trango will help us choose better transition words.

This podcast could make you a tad hungry because today we're comparing the art of writing

to the art of making a sandwich.

In fact, just for today we might need to change the name of the show to gourmet girl.

In this episode we'll examine how to transition smoothly from point to point so that the flavors

of your sandwich, your nonfiction writing, meld together subtly.

Back in grade school you learned the basics of writing.

The normal structure of an essay was an introduction, three supporting paragraphs and a conclusion.

You might say that you learned to create a run of the mill BLT, bacon lettuce and tomato

sandwich, two slices of bread, surrounded three clearly separated components, bacon, lettuce

and tomato.

For example, in an essay that answers the question, what did you do this summer?

A grade schooler may use a topic sentence like this.

The first thing I did on summer vacation was dot dot dot.

Then he'd move on to the second thing I did was dot dot dot.

You can imagine how his third supporting paragraph might begin.

For third graders, BLT type essays may be perfectly acceptable.

Their teachers don't expect them to be gourmet sentence chefs just yet.

As students mature, though, we must fear for them.

They may not learn how to write transitions that are more masterful.

Raise your hands now, grown-ups.

How many of you would write a sentence like?

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