Right Relationship, Wrong Register

Every connector does two jobs at once. It names a logical relationship - addition, contrast, example, summary - and it signals how formal the writing is and how much territory it covers. 'So' and 'in short' can both mark a summary, but 'so' sounds like spoken reasoning, while 'in short' sounds like a writer stepping back to compress a finished argument. In a formal paragraph reporting three findings, only one of those registers fits, even though both words point to the same relationship.

Scope works alongside register. Some connectors are built for a single clause ('to take one instance' introduces one case), others for a paragraph-level shift ('by contrast' sets two whole populations against each other), and others for closing out an entire argument ('in conclusion' claims the writer is wrapping up a multi-part case). A connector that gets the relationship right but the scope wrong still fails, because it tells the reader to expect more or less text than is actually being tied together. This is why 'in conclusion' cannot replace 'by contrast' just because the contrasting sentence happens to sit last: position in the paragraph is not the same as logical function. The sentence is still doing contrast, not summary.

This topic sits at the end of the module because it folds together everything the earlier transition questions tested separately: identifying the relationship, then layering register and scope on top. The companion skill, building one sentence from notes to hit a stated goal, asks the same question from the other direction - instead of matching a connector to fixed sentences, you are choosing which fact to lead with and how to frame it, using the same sense of register and scope.