Back to the Basics: Why Using Transition Words is Critical in Proposal Writing

In proposal writing, the goal is to convince the customer that your solution provides the greatest benefits through clear and concise narratives.

However, because of limited resources and time, we often find ourselves rushing to piece together content from various sources (e.g., boilerplate content, past proposals, notes from SMEs). Then you get to Pink or Red team, and the reviewers provide unsurprising feedback:

• The writing doesn’t flow well
• The section seems choppy
• The writing is disjointed

The problem?

You probably didn’t go back and add the necessary transition words. Transition words serve to establish logical connections between the sentences, paragraphs, and sections of the proposal.

Effective transitions enable the themes, strength statements, important features, and customer benefits to flow together. Transitions should occur at a variety of places in the response to form cohesive paragraphs and sections.

The main types of transitions include:

• Additive
• Adversative
• Causal
• Sequential

Additive. You should use additive transitions when you want to show that the current point is an addition to the previous one. Examples of additive transitions include:

And	Or
Further	Moreover
Alternatively	As well
On the other hand	Either
Too	Nor
Not only…., but also…	In fact
In addition	Actually
Neither	Additionally

Adversative. You should use adversative transitions when you want to signal conflict, contradiction, concession, or dismissal. Examples of adversative transitions include:

But	However
Whereas	Conversely
At least	Nevertheless
Though	Whichever
Either way	In either case
In contrast	While
Even more	Above all
Nonetheless	Although
Still	Yet

Causal. You should use causal transitions when you want to show how a circumstance or event was caused by other factors. Causal transitions make it easier for the evaluator to follow the logic of the major points you make in the proposal. Examples of causal transitions include:

Accordingly	And so
For this reason	So
Thus	In the event that
With this in mind	That being the case
As a result	Consequently
Then	Therefore
Because	Under those circumstances

Sequential. You should use sequential transitions when you want to express a numerical sequence, continuation, conclusion, digression, or summation. Examples of sequential transitions include:

First (Second, Third, etc.)	Beginning with
Secondly	Next
Afterward	After this/that
As stated previously	So
Starting with	Initially
Subsequently	Before
To conclude with	Finally
In short	Thus

Final Thoughts

Sometimes we need to save time by piecing together information from various resources. However, once we pull our sections together, we need to go back and make sure we are using transition words to connect our ideas together and ensure the sections flow properly. Without these critical transitions, our writing will be choppy and disjointed. So before your next color team review, go back and review your drafts, and make sure you are including these critical transition words. This easy step will help your sections to flow so much more smoothly!

Written by Ashley Kayes, CP APMP

Senior Proposal Consultant, AOC Key Solutions, Inc. (KSI)

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