Writing Tips – Contrast

Writing emails, memos, notes, reports, and other documents are essential aspects to the corporate world and business English. There are a lot of ways to improve writing in English, but one of the best ways is through improving conjunctions and other transition words.

Conjunctions are basically words such as “and” and “but.” These are two small, powerful words, but did you know there are dozens of transitory words, phrases and expressions in English. Let’s take a look at a few of them with the same meaning – contrast – but which are used in different grammatical ways.  All of these words roughly translate to “embora” or “apesar” in Portuguese.

Although – Embora: Demonstrate contrast between two situations

Although I am not a fan of Madonna, I enjoyed her concert. 

Nonetheless – Embora

I am not a fan of Madonna. Nonetheless, I enjoyed her concert. 

In Spite Of – Apesar

In spite of no strong feelings towards Madonna, I really enjoyed her concert.

Despite – Apesar

Despite a general dislike of Madonna, I actually enjoyed her concert. 

So, there are a variety of ways to say the same or similar phrase. Keep things fresh by alternating between different words and different manners of constructing a sentence. This keeps your writing fresh, improves your English skills, and simply sounds more professional.