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Key points
- Continuity is the most important and often the least understood aspect of writing.
- Readers may struggle with comprehension when sentences lack transitions.
- Using recency positions in sentences can bolster readers' memory of the most important content in sentences.
- Primacy and recency positions in sentences help readers to identify clauses and concepts as strongly linked.
English paragraphs typically contain more gaps than Swiss cheese. Why? In languages like Chinese, sentences end when an author’s meaning is complete. In contrast, in English, grammar mostly determines when sentences end. As a result, English’s sentence structure naturally introduces gaps between sentences.
And these gaps sow confusion in readers and create the greatest slow-downs in reading speeds of any aspect of writing. On the other hand, when readers recognize simple connections between clauses and sentences, they perform better on comprehension and recall of material, helping them to perform better on standardized tests and to receive higher grades.
Meet continuity, the most important and least-understood aspect of writing you’ve likely never heard of.
1. When you use transitions to tie sentences together, you make reading easier and meaning clearer.
Without explicit connections between sentences, readers have difficulty understanding stories, let alone more abstract arguments. Readers spend more time trying to understand sentences that lack a clear relationship to the sentences around them and also encounter difficulty in recalling the meaning of discontinuous sentences. On the other hand, transitions like because, since, and then speed up reading and sharpen recall.
Transitions create bridges between sentences across gaps readers would otherwise struggle to understand. Notice the difference that transitions (in bold in the second example) make to a student’s essay on Jane Eyre:
Before: Mr. Brocklehurst then punishes Jane by making her stand in public, and does not allow anyone to speak to her, and it was Helen’s words that give her the courage and strength to get back on her feet. Miss Temple helped her get rid of the unnecessary “crime.” Jane admired Helen’s broad mind and profound knowledge, and she worked harder to learn. She thought Lowood was better than Mrs. Reed’s.
After: Despite Lowood starving and humiliating the girls, Jane still thinks Lowood is better than Mrs. Reed’s. However, at Lowood, Mr. Brocklehurst punishes Jane by making her stand in public and does not allow anyone to speak to her. Nevertheless, even when Jane feels miserable, Helen’s words give Jane the courage and strength to get back on her feet. In a few days, Miss Temple also corrects the picture Mr. Brocklehurst painted of Jane’s conduct, the unnecessary “crime” of lying that Mr. Brocklehurst accused Jane of. Over the first months of her time at Lowood, Jane grows to admire Helen’s broad mind and profound knowledge, which inspire Jane to work harder to learn.
2. Reserve the endings of sentences for your most important points.
In writing, where you put information trumps what you say. For example, a positive performance evaluation strongly influenced overall ratings of a video lecture—but only when the evaluation came last in a series of four. Similarly, poor performance also swayed students’ evaluations of lecture quality—but only when that performance also came last. Researchers have likewise discovered that, when asked to memorize lists of items or even of nonsense syllables, experimental subjects have the clearest recall of the last items.
As writers, we typically end sentences with a whimper, not a bang, usually by providing a rationale for an action at the end of sentences or insignificant details about time or place. For example, the writer of the email excerpt below ended a sentence with the reason for a requested deadline—presumably to show other employees that administrators created the deadline for a specific purpose. However, the underlined words in the sentence’s stress position strand the deadline in the sentence’s dead zone, far away from either primacy or recency effects in memory. As a result, readers may register the deadline but are less likely to recall it than they would be if they received the revised example, which shunts the deadline into the sentence’s recency position in boldface.
Before: We need your response about scheduling preferences before Friday at noon at the latest to ensure we can finalize the schedule prior to early registration.
After: So we can finalize the schedule prior to early registration, we need your response about scheduling preferences before Friday at noon.
3. Limit the lengths of sentences to reduce readers’ cognitive overhead.
Long sentences challenge readers’ ability to connect ideas across sentences because lengthy sentences strain readers’ working memories. Even strong readers can face too many demands on verbal working memory from long sentences. Moreover, we also recall less content when writers cram more clauses into sentences. In sentences with more than two clauses, make one clause independent and turn it into a short sentence, which helps readers recall a greater amount of specific content.
For example, this example, ironically about improving students’ reading and writing skills, tries to cram too many ideas into a single sentence.
Before: But if we are seeking to boost our students' learning of course content, to improve their basic intellectual skills—such as writing, speaking, and critical thinking—and to prepare them for success in their careers, then I believe we can find in small teaching an approach to our shared work of educating students that is effective for our students and accessible to the largest number of working college and university teachers.
After: As educators, we seek to boost our students’ learning of course content and to improve their basic intellectual skills—such as writing, speaking, and critical thinking—and to prepare them for success in their careers. And, with these goals, small teaching can prove effective for our students and accessible to the largest number of working college and university teachers.
4. Create bridges between the endings and beginnings of sentences with common words.
To create the strongest ties between ideas, link concepts through common phrases shared across sentences. This use of referential continuity builds bridges between sentences by placing new information in the recency position in sentences and then beginning the next sentence with a reference to one or more words from the recency position. This strategy for tying sentences together boosts reading speed and comprehension alike. Moreover, readers easily identify these links at the outsets of sentences because the final clause of the preceding sentence occupies a privileged place in their working memory.
Writers will find these short sequences, linking recency and primacy positions in sentences, most useful in technical explanations, particularly for non-expert audiences, like the first description of deep-brain stimulation below. This excerpt challenges readers because its sentences lack any explicit links to tie its sentences together. On the other hand, the second example links the recency position of the first sentence with the primacy position of the second and continues this (bolded) sequencing of ideas through every sentence.
As the second example also reveals, you can either use the same words, like the initial repetition of pacemaker. Or you can use a related word, as in the transformation of electrical stimulation into electrode.
Before: Deep Brain Stimulation is sometimes described as a pacemaker for the brain. Electrical stimulation of the heart has a longer history, the first pacemaker having been implanted in 1958. An electrode is threaded inside the heart, which gives small shocks at a rate of about 60 per minute in order to stimulate the muscle to pump normally. The technology owes its success largely to the invention of a commercially viable transistor, in 1948, which made possible the miniaturization of electronics. Today, some three million Americans are estimated to have a cardiac pacemaker.
After: Deep Brain Stimulation is sometimes described as the brain’s pacemaker. Pacemakers for hearts rely on similar technology, using electrical stimulation. An electrode is threaded inside the heart, which gives small shocks at a rate of about 60 per minute, stimulating the muscle to pump normally. This form of stimulation owes its success largely to the invention of a commercially viable transistor in 1948, which miniaturized electronics. These electronics today power the cardiac pacemakers of an estimated three million Americans.
