Why it matters when you are writing
The comment “this doesn’t flow” almost never means the sentences are badly built. It means the reader could not tell why one paragraph followed another. Signposting fixes that by making the connection explicit — that this evidence complicates the previous claim, that the argument now turns from mechanism to consequence, that the next section takes up an objection. The logic was in your head; the reader only has the page.
Three levels do most of the work. At document level, the end of your introduction previews the shape of the argument. At section level, an opening sentence states what this section establishes and a closing sentence says what it has established. At paragraph level, the first sentence makes a claim and the transition names the relation — “however” for contrast, “because” for cause, “by contrast” for comparison — rather than the all-purpose “additionally,” which tells a reader nothing.
The risk is padding. “In this section, I will discuss…” repeated at every heading is machinery a reader has to walk around. Prefer signposts that carry content: “Two of these three explanations fail once municipal texts are included” both orients and argues. If a signpost could be deleted with no loss of orientation, delete it.
