What is the purpose of transitional words?

Transitions are words and phrases that provide a connection between ideas, sentences, and paragraphs. Transitions help to make a piece of writing flow better. They can turn disconnected pieces of ideas into a unified whole, and prevent a reader from getting lost in the storyline.

The purpose of transitional words is to connect ideas, sentences, and paragraphs in any piece of writing or speeches in order to make the ideas flow smoothly and better.

There are a variety of transitional words and each of them have a role: some are used to express contrast (like on the contrary, however, notwithstanding), others to denote time (after, at last, before), to add more information to a previous point (furthermore, besides, moreover), to show similarity (likewise, similarly, in like fashion), to illustrate a point or give examples (for instance, for example, to illustrate), etc.