In lectures and presentations, you can be kinder to your listeners
by providing what educators call “signposts” – indicators of where the
talk is going and the organization of ideas. These are words, phrases, or
sentences that can help you to organize your sentences, and help
listeners understand your flow of thought. This so-called “signposting”
includes commonly used words and shorter phrases that linguists call
transitionals or discourse markers – expressions that speakers use to
organize thoughts, and that provide transitions. Also, these sometimes
provide cues about the interpretation of sentences and speakers’
attitudes toward what they are saying.