INFERENCE INDICATORSYou present an argument when you offer one or more reasons in an effort to support or provide evidence for a conclusion. When you do this, you should make it quite clear to your readers that you are in fact presenting an argument, instead of merely providing information; and you should also be clear about which statement is your conclusion, and which ones are your reasons.One excellent way of doing this is to use inference indicators: words, phrases, or even whole sentences thatindicateor point toward reasons and conclusions. A conclusion-indicator (such as "therefore") tells a reader that a conclusion comes right after it; a reason-indicators indicate that reasons come right after them (such as "because"). Here are a few typical inference indicators:SOME CONCLUSION INDICATORSthereforesothuswhich proves thatwhich shows thatfrom which it follows thatconsequentlywhich leads towhich is whyWhat follows from this is obvious.SOME REASON INDICATORSbecausedue to the fact thatis based onis proved byis shown bywhich follows fromis a consequence ofsinceforThere are two reasons for this. First, . . .

And here are some words that arenotinference indicators:however but and moreover in addition or if . . . then . . . unlessThey aren't inference indicators because they do not tell you, "here comes a conclusion," or "here comes a reason." Inference indicators do tell you (because of their basic meaning) that either a reason or a conclusion is coming next!