SCHS INFORMATION EVENING - Thursday, February 16, 2012 at 7:00 PM in the SCHS Chapel

Signal Words

Trying to determine what an author is trying to say? Pay attention to the signal words he or she uses.

Main Idea Signal Words
Signal	Significance
There are three reasons why…	Give the number of main ideas
First..	Gives the first main idea
Second	Gives the second main idea
Third…	Gives the third main idea
And most importantly…	Signals a main idea
A major development…	Signals a main idea

Signals that lead the reader forward
To show addition	To show time
And	And then
Again	Afterwards,
And then,	At length
Besides,	After a few hours,
Equally important	Formerly
Finally,	First, second, etc,
First, second, etc,	Finally
Further,	Immediately thereafter,
Furthermore,	Later,
Lastly,	Next, etc,
Moreover,	Previously,
Next,	Soon,
Nor,	Then,
Too,
What’s more.

Signals that make the reader stop and compare
But	Notwithstanding	Althought
Yet,	On the other hand,	Althought this is the rule,
And yet,	On the contrary,	While this is the rule
However,	After all,	Conversely
Still,	For all that,	Simultaneously,
Nevertheless,	In conrast	Meanwhile,
Nonetheless,	At the same time,	In the meantime.

Signal words used to develop ideas
To give examples	To emphasis	To repeat
For instance	Obviously,	In brief
For example	In fact,	In short,
To demonstrate	As a matter of fact,	As I have said
To illustrate,	Indeed,	As I have noted,
As an illustration,	In any case	In other words.
	In any event,
	That is,

Signal words to conclude and summarize
To introduce conclusion	To summarize
Hence,	In brief,
Therefore,	On the whole,
Accordingly,	Summing up,
Consequently,	In sum,
To conclude,	Thus,