At it's most basic level, cause and effect is a question of what happened first, and what happened second. A cause is a reason why something happened and an effect is the result of a cause. In your writing, you may need to explain the cause and effect relationship between two events or issues. By focusing on paragraph development, you can trace the connection between these two events. You can explain why events occur, and what events they prompt in turn. The best way to show this development is through the language that you use. Transitional phrases and conjunctions that express cause and effect include:
since as a result because of
because therefore due to
consequently for this reason so
When dealing with cause and effect, it is important to clearly communicate which is the cause and which the effect. For example, if you were given the two phrases:
Jake's alarm clock didn't go off and Jake slept through class
you could infer that there was a relationship between the two events, even though you weren't being told what the relationship was, because you know what alarm clocks are and how they work. Now, if you were asked to describe that relationship how would you do it? In the examples below, the cause is blue italics, the effect is green regular type, and the conjunctions or transitional phrases that explain that relationship are underlined and in red:
Cause and effect paragraphs can focus either on the causes of an event (an effect), or the effects of an event (a cause). Which structure you use will depend on which direction you want to progress in when starting from the initial event. Do you want to examine the events that caused it, or the events that will occur as a result of it? In either case, you will begin with a topic sentence that states the focus of the paragraph and gives a brief overview of the effects or causes associated with it.
With this scenario, if you chose to focus on the effect, your topic sentence might be something like
If you chose to focus on the cause your topic sentence might read:
Your paragraph will then offer supporting sentences which can be arranged in chronological order (what happened first, second, ect.) or order of importance. Each supporting sentence will present in detail a cause or effect related to the topic sentence. The paragraph ends with a concluding statement which summarizes the effect and the causes that led to it.