Transitions
As this preliminary plan takes its form under your careful consideration of the material you will decide that there are places between topics or sections which will require bridging over in order to attain coherence and emphasis. These places of division should be filled by transitions. A transition is a passage which carries over the meaning from what precedes to what follows. It serves as a connecting link. It prevents the material from falling apart. It preserves the continuity of ideas. A transition may be as short as a single word, such as however, consequently, nevertheless. It may be a sentence. It may grow into a paragraph.
"A transition is a passage which carries over the meaning from what precedes to what follows"
The purpose of transitions—to link parts together—may induce beginners to consider them as of little importance since they manifestly add no new ideas to the theme. This opinion is entirely erroneous. Even in material for reading, transitions are necessary. In material to be received through the ear they are the most valuable helps that can be supplied to have the listener follow the development. They mark the divisions for him. They show that a certain section is completed and a new one is about to begin. They show the relation in meaning of two portions.
"Even in material for reading, transitions are necessary. "
The shorter forms of transitions—words and phrases—belong rather to the expression, the language, of the speech than to this preliminary planning.
A speaker should never fail to use such phrases as on the other hand, continuing the same line of reasoning, passing to the next point, from a different point of view, because they so clearly indicate the relation of two succeeding passages of a speech.
In planning, the speaker frequently has to consider the insertion of longer transitions—paragraphs or even more extended passages. Just how such links appear in finished speeches the following extracts show. In the first selection Washington when he planned his material realized he had reached a place where he could conclude. He wanted to add more. What reason should he offer his audience for violating the principle discussed in the chapter on conclusions? How could he make clear to them his desire to continue?
"In planning, the speaker frequently has to consider the insertion of longer transitions"
We cannot assert that he actually did this, but he might have jotted down upon the paper bearing a first scheme of his remarks the phrase, "my solicitude for the people." That, then, was the germ of his transition paragraph. Notice how clearly the meaning is expressed. Could any hearer fail to comprehend? The transition also announces plainly the topic of the rest of the speech.
Here, perhaps, I ought to stop. But a solicitude for your welfare, which cannot end but with my life, and the apprehension of danger, natural to that solicitude, urge me on an occasion like the present, to offer to your solemn contemplation, and to recommend to your frequent review, some sentiments which are the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all-important to the permanency of your felicity as a people. These will be offered to you with the more freedom, as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive to bias his counsels. Nor can I forget, as an encouragement to it, your indulgent reception of my sentiment on a former and not dissimilar occasion.
George Washington: Farewell Address, 1796
The next selection answers to a part of the plan announced in a passage already quoted in this chapter. Notice how this transition looks both backward and forward: it is both retrospective and anticipatory. If you recall that repetition helps to emphasize facts, you will readily understand why a transition is especially valuable if it adheres to the same language as the first statement of the plan. In a written scheme this might have appeared under the entry, "pass from 1 to 2; list 4 apologies for crime." This suggests fully the material of the passage.
And with this exposure I take my leave of the Crime against Kansas. Emerging from all the blackness of this Crime, where we seem to have been lost, as in a savage wood, and turning our backs upon it, as upon desolation and death, from which, while others have suffered, we have escaped, I come now to the Apologies which the Crime has found....
They are four in number, and fourfold in character. The first is the Apology tyrannical; the second, the Apology imbecile; the third, the Apology absurd; and the fourth, the Apology infamous. That is all. Tyranny, imbecility, absurdity, and infamy all unite to dance, like the weird sisters, about this Crime.
The Apology tyrannical is founded on the mistaken act of Governor Reeder, in authenticating the Usurping Legislature, etc.
Charles Sumner: The Crime against Kansas, 1856
The beginning speaker should not hesitate to make his transitions perfectly clear to his audience. When they add to the merely bridging use the additional value of serving as short summaries of what has gone before and as sign posts of what is to follow, they are trebly serviceable. The attempt to be clear will seldom be waste of time or effort. The obvious statements of the preceding selections, the use of figures, are excellent models for speakers to imitate. With practice will come skill in making transitions of different kinds, in which the same purposes will be served in various other ways, in what may be considered more finished style. The next extracts represent this kind of transition.
Sir, like most questions of civil prudence, this is neither black nor white, but gray. The system of copyright has great advantages and great disadvantages; and it is our business to ascertain what these are, and then to make an arrangement under which the advantages may be as far as possible secured, and the disadvantages as far as possible excluded. The charge which I bring against my honorable and learned friend's bill is this, that it leaves the advantages nearly what they are at present, and increases the disadvantages at least fourfold.
Thomas B. Macaulay: Copyright Bill, 1841
One-third of the population of the South is of the Negro race. No enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this section can disregard this element of our population and reach the highest success. I but convey to you, Mr. President and Directors, the sentiment of the masses of my race when I say that in no way have the value and manhood of the American Negro been more fittingly and generously recognized than by the managers of this magnificent Exposition at every stage of its progress. It is a recognition that will do more to cement the friendship of the two races than any occurrence since the dawn of our freedom.
Booker T. Washington in a speech at the Atlanta Exposition, 1895