In written English, linking devices help your reader to see and understand the relationship between your clauses, sentences, or paragraphs. Linking devices can be conjunctions, adverbs or phrases, and can signal a variety of meanings and relationships, including cause/effect, time sequence, similarities, contrast, examples and explanation. In this unit, we will focus on linking devices showing cause/effect relationships.

Cause

Here are some common subordinating conjunctions used to express cause:

  • Because
  • As
  • Since

These words begin a dependent clause; in other words, they must be followed by a subject and verb. As we saw in the previous unit, this dependent clause can begin the sentence or come after the main clause:

  • Because many customers complained, the company changed its policy.

OR

  • The company changed its policy because many customers complained.

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