Discourse Markers
Global Macro-organizers
Topic Markers
- Let me start with... (Spoken)
- The first thing/point is...
- What I’d like to talk about is… (Sp.)
- What I’d like to point out is… (Sp.)
- Let’s first suggest…
- Let us begin with…
- Firstly, … Secondly, …
- First of all, …
- To start/begin with, …
- In the first place, …
- Moreover, …
- Furthermore, …
- In addition, …
- Besides, … (Neutral)
Local Macro-markers
Exemplifiers
- For instance, …
- For example, …
- Similarly, …
- In other words, …
- That is to say, …
- That is, …
- A clear example of this is…
- I mean, … (Neutral)
- An excellent example of
this is…
- A similar example is…
- This is illustrated by…
- Examples of this would be…
- In particular, …
- This is shown by…
- An example would be…
- A good example is
to be found in…
- A similar case is…
- ..., such as... (Neutral)
Topic Shifters
- This leads to...
- Another thing/point is...
- It is sometimes suggested
that…
- There is a further problem;...
- A further point is…
- On (the) one hand, …
- On the other hand, …
Relators
- Actually, …
- As a matter of fact, …
- In fact, …
- The reason for this is…
- Indeed, …
- This is true of…
- This leads on to…
- This suggests that…
- More striking is…
- As we have seen, …
- It is clear from what we
have seen that…
- In a sense…
- This should make us
wonder why…
- Not only ___, (but) also ___
- Returning to ___, …
- Going back to ___, …
- As we saw before, …
- Notice that…
- An interesting point here is…
- If we compare this to …
- It follows that…
Summarizers
- To sum up, ...
- To summarize, ...
- To conclude, …
- In conclusion, …
- What we need, thus,
is…
- In a sense, then, …
- The point of this is…
- Thus, …
Evaluators
- There is no doubt that…
- Clearly, …
- What we need, then, is…
- This suggests that…
- It would appear, then, that…
- We could say, then, …
- Clearly, we can say that…
- So, we must…
- What is important is…
- This indicates/shows that…
- Therefore, it is…
- The point is simply that…
- This explains why…
- That is worth nothing.
- We should be careful (not) to..
- ..., hence ...
Qualifiers
- I suspect…
- Unfortunately, …
- It is (not) easy to…
- I am (not) sure that…
- The difficulty is…
- It is quite clear that…
- What is important here is…
- It is interesting to note that…
- It is obvious that…
- The point here is…
- It is at this level that…
- By ___, I mean…
- ___ is important because…
- It is worth noting that…
- It is a fact that…
- It is undeniable that…
- There is no doubt that…
Contrast
- Yet, … (Formal)
- On (the) one hand, …
- On the other hand, …
- In contrast, …
- However, ... (Neutral)
- Nevertheless, ...
- Nonetheless, ...
Generalizers One’s opinion
- On the whole, … - In my opinion, …
- In general, … - As far as I know, …
- As a rule, … - As far as I am concerned, …
- In most cases, … - From my point of view, …
- In many cases, … - It seems to me that…
- Mostly, … - I tend to believe that…
- Broadly speaking, … - I have a tendency to…
- Perhaps, it all is only… - I am inclined to think…
- ___ seem(s) to be changing… - I (strongly) believe that...
- In the majority of cases, … - In my view, ...
- In most cases, …
- Generally speaking, …
- Often… / Sometimes, …
- In some cases, …
- Under no circumstances, …
- On a few occasions, …
- By no means, …
Distinctions & Arguments
- The main difference between ___ and ___ is…
- One of the differences between ___ and ___ is…
- One of the (dis)advantages of ___ is…
- One (dis)advantage of ___ is…
- One of the arguments for/against ___ is…
- It has been argued that…
- It can be argued that…
- I would argue that…