Definition:
The connection (a word, phrase, clause, sentence, or entire paragraph) between two parts of a piece of writing, contributing to cohesion. Transitional devices include pronouns, repetition, and transitional expressions. See also: Coherence Strategies.
Etymology:
From the Latin, "to go across"Examples:
- Transitional Words and Phrases:
"At first a toy, then a mode of transportation for the rich, the automobile was designed as man's mechanical servant. Later it became part of the pattern of living." - Repetition:
"The way I write is who I am, or have become, yet this is a case in which I wish I had instead of words and their rhythms a cutting room, equipped with an Avid, a digital editing system on which I could touch a key and collapse the sequence of time, show you simultaneously all the frames of memory that come to me now, let you pick the takes, the marginally different expressions, the variant readings of the same lines. This is a case in which I need more than words to find the meaning. This is a case in which I need whatever it is I think or believe to be penetrable, if only for myself."
(Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking, 2006) - Pronouns and Repeated Sentence Structures
"Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return."
(Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking, 2006)
Pronunciation: trans-ZISH-en
