Key Words for Organizing Information

This list, most certainly not exhaustive, gives examples of words that should alert you to
particular patterns of organization and relationships between ideas. Knowing these words
will help you to understand what an author is trying to express, how to categorize
information, and how to organize, introduce, and make transitions between information
on essay exams or in writing assignments.

Cause and Effect Time Order To Show Summary

Accordingly Afterwards Briefly, in brief
Because Later All in all
Consequently Now To sum up
For this reason Meanwhile In sum
Since Presently In other words
Thus Formerly And so
If…then Next On the whole
So Subsequently To conclude
Then In conclusion
To Show Result Before For these reasons
Hence
Therefore To Show To Show Contrast
Accordingly Exemplification But
Consequently For instance Yet
Thus For example, an And yet
As a result example is Still
Then As an example Despite
In the final analysis In fact However
Finally Nevertheless
In order that To Show Emphasis Nonetheless
To be sure On the other hand
To Show Place Indeed On the contrary
Here Most important of all Although
There A major factor Notwithstanding
Over there Largely For all that
Beyond Mainly Despite this
Nearby In any event In contrast
Opposite to In opposition to
Adjacent to To Show Repetition Rather than
On the opposite side As noted above Therefore
As I have said In spite of
To repeat

Rev. January 08
To Show Comparison Order/List/Sequence
Similarly First, second, etc.
Likewise Next
In like manner Then
In the same way Last, finally
Equally
To Show Addition
To Show Purpose Additionally, in addition
To this end Moreover
For this purpose Further
For this end Furthermore
In order that Besides
And
To Show Time Likewise
Previously Also, too
Up to this time Nor
Meanwhile Again
At length Equally important
Immediately Proceeding to
Soon
After a few days To Begin a Series
In the meantime First
Afterward First of all
Later In the first place
To begin with
Starting with
To commence with
In the beginning
Initially
First and foremost

Rev. January 08