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Why Vary Sentence Starters?
The word or words that you use at the beginning of a sentence can have a great impact on your article or essay as a whole. Not only does it make your written piece more interesting, it also maintains the interest of the reader. In addition to this, it avoids your article becoming repetitive. It can often be difficult to think of different vocabulary to use that is appropriate to use at the beginning of a paragraph and still convey the meaning that the paragraph is intended for. Here are some tips on how to vary sentence starters.
Making Additional Points
When writing an article, each paragraph will usually represent a different point that you are trying to make to the reader. A common mistake that many writers make is to use the word ‘also’ repeatedly at the beginning of each paragraph. If you are writing different points in each paragraph that each support the argument that you are making or the information that you are giving in your article, then it is wise to use different sentence starters at the beginning of each paragraph. Try the following:
- In addition to this…..
- Another point of view is…
- An argument that supports this is….
- An alternative viewpoint is…..
- An argument that takes a different stance is…..
- Alternatively,
- Statistics show that…
- Subsequently,
- However,
There are many different options so be creative. Another option is the inclusion of a rhetorical question at the beginning of the sentence. This often draws a reader into the piece. Be careful though, the article or essay still has to make sense to the reader. Sometimes becoming too clever in your choice of vocabulary can create a situation where the sentence makes little or no sense.
Writing Through a Time Period
Many articles or essays travel through a series of points in chronological (or time) order. That is, the earlier the point is made, the earlier the event that is referred to happened. This is also usually the case when writing a creative writing piece. The mistake that is often made here is to repeatedly write ‘then’ at the beginning of each paragraph. To vary your writing and make it more interesting to the reader, try the following:
- firstly,
- In the first instance,
- Secondly,
- Thirdly
- Penultimately,
- Finally,
- Next,
Again, there are a number of possibilities and this is only a basic overview. Try looking on your computers thesaurus to help you find interesting and varied vocabulary to use.
voted, very good for someone like me. I will save this. thanks dea and write more about writing. it is indeed a great service.
liked, shared tweeted stumbled & bookmarked - I am out of votes or I would have done that too - not to worry though, I'll be back, - trying to think of sentence starters is a pain in the "but"
Very useful information. I have frequently spent more time hunting through dictionaries and thesauruses to find just that right word to start a paragraph.
But I too often resort to the but.
And then I also use boring, repetitive words like and then.
So this is very useful information for those writers among us who may be guilty of using boring words to start our paragraphs.
You suggested good tips for writing here. no votes left but I will tweet this.