Transitions That Establish Time Relationships (ORG 201)

Every time transition is a claim about order, pointed like an arrow. 'Then' claims event A finished before event B starts. 'Meanwhile' claims A and B are happening at the same time. 'By then' or 'by that time' claims B was already true before or by the moment A happened, which means B's action actually came first even though it's written second. The transition word is not decoration. It's a timeline instruction, and the sentence only makes sense if the instruction matches what the verbs and details actually say happened.

So the method is always the same: read both sentences, find the real sequence from the verb tense and any clues (had already, two months before, at the same time), draw that sequence as a timeline in your head, then pick the word whose arrow matches it. If the second sentence uses 'had already' or references something set up earlier, the second event actually happened first, so you need a backward-looking word like 'by then' or 'even before that.' If both things are happening side by side, you need 'meanwhile.' Only when the second event truly follows the first in real time does 'then' belong.

This is why 'then' is the riskiest default in the whole transitions family: it looks like the neutral, safe choice for 'two things happened,' but it secretly asserts strict forward order. Pair it with a sentence that's actually describing something earlier or simultaneous, and the whole passage reads as chronologically broken, which is exactly the kind of organization error these questions are built to catch. The fix is the same habit used elsewhere in this unit: find what the two claim boxes actually say before trusting any arrow between them.