When writing reports, students are told to use chronological order or time order. All that means is that actions should be written in the order they happened. This sounds simple enough, and really shouldn’t be a challenge, especially when actions are carefully selected. However, some students run into problems because they’re not sure how to list the actions in a way that shows the order.
This is when transitions come in very handy. Transitions help the writing flow smoothly from one idea to the next. Sometimes with a single word, sometimes with a few words. There are many transition words and phrases, but the best ones for reports are the simple ones that show time order. Some of these are: before, after, then, to begin, at the onset, next, from this point, during, at that time, at the end, to finish, and while.
The key to using transition words effectively is keeping to the ones that are specific about time order and avoiding those that could introduce opinion. For example, words like ‘suddenly’ and ‘not long after’ are subjective ideas that show how the writer feels about the actions taken place. In the first instance, the writer believes the actions are unexpected. In the second instance, the writer is making a judgment about the length of time, stating that it’s long without giving a time frame.
These subtle opinions can change the tone of the report. A better way to report information regarding time is to give the exact time that has passed. So, a statement like ‘approximately two minutes after’ would work much better than either option above.
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