Abstract
Professional communicators and managers can soften the tone of bad news messages by avoiding transitional axes, which are words and phrases that sever one section of the message from the next section. These words destroy any potential for goodwill between the sender and receiver of the message. The sender can avoid transitional axes in at least three ways: by using verbally keyed transitions such as repeated words, synonyms, specific naming, abbreviations, or generic nouns; by using cognitively keyed transitions that employ word and thought association to create implied connections; and by using traditional connectors such as conjunctions and conjunctive adverbs. Each of these techniques avoids use of the transitional ax and facilitates the exchange of bad news.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>