Connectors for Written Argument: לפיכך, עם זאת, אשר על כן | Hebrew Grammar

Written Hebrew argues with a different vocabulary from spoken Hebrew, and the reason is structural: speech can leave a logical relation implicit because the listener can ask, and a paragraph cannot. So a written argument names its moves — therefore, however, moreover, first — and Hebrew has a dedicated word for each.

This page sorts that inventory by the move it makes. The history of these words and the reading-versus-production question belong to literary connectors, which owns the items that only ever appear on a page — אך, ברם, כי אם, שכן, הואיל ו־. What follows is the working set for building an argument, and what each item claims.

The inventory, by move

Every row pairs the written connector with the spoken word that does the same job. Read the right-hand column first: it is very short, and that is the point.

Move	Written connectors	In speech
Result	לפיכך, על כן, משום כך, כתוצאה מכך, מכאן ש־, אשר על כן	אז, בגלל זה
Concession	עם זאת, יחד עם זאת, אף על פי כן, אולם	אבל, ובכל זאת
Addition	יתר על כן, זאת ועוד, בנוסף לכך, לא זו בלבד ש־	וגם, חוץ מזה
Enumeration	ראשית, שנית, שלישית, לבסוף	קודם כול, אחר כך, בסוף
Framing	לאור זאת, בהתאם לכך, למעשה	אז ככה, בעצם

לכן sits in the spoken column and belongs in the written one too: it is the neutral result connector and the correct default in both. In Hebrew Wikipedia it dwarfs everything else here — a floor of roughly 29,000 articles against 7,700 for לפיכך (insource regex, identical shape on every probe, 21 August 2026; both figures are large enough to drift between runs, so read them as floors and as a ratio, not as counts).

The result family, sorted by what it claims

These are not heights of one word. Read their literal composition and four different claims fall out.

Connector	Literally	What it asserts
לכןlakhén / לפיכךlefikhákh / על כןal ken	"therefore" / "according to that"	plain consequence
משום כךmishúm kakh	"because of that"	the previous clause is the reason
כתוצאה מכךketotsa'á mikákh	"as a result of that"	a causal chain in the world
מכאן ש־mikán she-	"from here that…"	an inference — what the evidence licenses you to conclude

That last distinction is the one that separates a C1 writer from a B2 one. כתוצאה מכך says the world did something; מכאן ש־ says you may now conclude something. Swap them and a paragraph starts claiming causation it never demonstrated.

הגשם ירד ברציפות שבוע, וכתוצאה מכך נסגרו כל הכבישים לעמק.

hagéshem yarád birtsifút shavúa, ukhtotsa'á mikákh nisgerú kol hakvishím la'émek

It rained without a break for a week, and as a result every road into the valley was closed. (news — a causal chain)

אף אחד מהמשתתפים לא הכיר את הנתונים, מכאן שהדוח לא הופץ מראש.

af ekhád mehamishtatfím lo hikír et hanetuním, mikán shehadóakh lo hufáts merósh

None of the participants was familiar with the figures, from which it follows that the report was not circulated in advance. (academic — an inference)

The syntactic habit with no English analogue

Three of these connectors do not stand alone in front of a sentence. They bind with ש־ and take a full clause: מכאן ש־, כך ש־, אף על פי ש־. English has nothing like this, because therefore, so and although are single words that never need a complementiser bolted on. You cannot render so we'll make it as כך and stop — the ש is part of the connector.

הישיבה נדחתה בשעה, כך שנספיק להגיע.

hayeshivá nidkhatá besha'á, kakh shenaspík lehagía

The meeting's been put back an hour, so we'll make it in time.

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A quick structural test. If the connector ends in ש־, what follows must be a clause with its own verb. If it does not — לפיכך, עם זאת, לאור זאת — what follows is an ordinary independent sentence and the connector simply sits in front of it. Getting this wrong produces sentences that stall halfway.

Concession and addition

עם זאת is the everyday written however, and its longer twin יחד עם זאת does the same job with more weight. Both concede: they grant the previous point and set its limit. What they do not do is add — that difference, and a dictionary gloss that gets it backwards, are on contrast markers.

המדיניות החדשה הוזילה את המחירים. עם זאת, אין בכך כדי להסביר את הירידה בביקוש.

hamediniyút hakhadashá hozíla et hamekhirím. im zot, ein bekhákh kdei lehasbír et hayeridá babikúsh

The new policy has brought prices down. That said, this does not account for the fall in demand. (academic)

The additive set is יתר על כן, זאת ועוד and בנוסף לכך, plus the two-part לא זו בלבד ש… אלא ש…, which is the one worth practising because it has a shape rather than just a slot: it announces that the second item outdoes the first.

התוכנית חורגת מהתקציב. יתר על כן, איש לא בדק אם היא בכלל ישימה.

hatokhnít khorégat mehataktsív. yatér al ken, ish lo badák im hi bikhlál yesimá

The plan is over budget. What is more, nobody has checked whether it is workable at all.

לא זו בלבד שהתקציב אושר, אלא שהוגדל בעשרים אחוז.

lo zo bilvád shehataktsív ushár, éla shehugdál be'esrím akhúz

Not only was the budget approved, it was increased by twenty per cent. (formal)

Signposting and framing

ראשית, שנית, שלישית, לבסוף are the ordinal signposts: cheap to learn and disproportionately effective, because a reader told there are three points will follow all three. לאור זאת ("in light of this") and בהתאם לכך ("accordingly") frame what comes next as following from what came before, without asserting a mechanism.

ראשית, אין תקציב. שנית, אין צוות. ולבסוף, אין תאריך יעד.

reshít, ein taktsív. shenít, ein tsévet. ulevasóf, ein ta'aríkh yá'ad

First, there is no budget. Second, there is no team. And lastly, there is no target date.

הנתונים החדשים סותרים את ההנחה המקורית. לאור זאת, הוחלט לפתוח את המחקר מחדש.

hanetuním hakhadashím sotrím et hahanakhá hamekorít. le'ór zot, hukhlát liftóakh et hamekhkár mekhadásh

The new data contradict the original assumption. In light of this, it has been decided to reopen the study. (academic)

Two heavy items, and how heavy each really is

לפיכך is Mishnaic, attested in one of the most-quoted passages in the Mishnah: לְפִיכָךְ נִבְרָא אָדָם יְחִידִי, "therefore man was created singly", at Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5, where it occurs twice. It is entirely standard in modern formal Hebrew; 7,700 Wikipedia articles is not the profile of an exotic word.

אשר על כן is a different case, and it is worth being precise instead of judgemental about it. Neither Hebrew Wiktionary nor Milog carries an entry for it; Milog returns only unrelated matches on אשר על. In Hebrew Wikipedia it appears in 83 to 84 articles across seven runs — against 2,288 for יתר על כן and 7,700 for לפיכך (both floors), so it is roughly ninety times rarer than לפיכך, measured the same way on the same day. All ten sampled hits are genuine uses of the connector, so the count is clean.

What those ten do not show is a single genre: they run from an article on Britannica to a Supreme Court ruling quoted in a judge's biography to the Ramchal's letters. The word is not specialised. It is simply rare, and nothing here licenses calling it pompous — no source consulted for this guide says any such thing.

הנתבע לא הופיע לדיון ולא הגיש כתב הגנה; אשר על כן, בית המשפט מקבל את התביעה.

hanitbá lo hofía ladiyún veló higísh ktav haganá; ashér al ken, beit hamishpát mekabél et hatvi'á

The defendant neither appeared at the hearing nor filed a defence; accordingly, the court allows the claim. (legal)

The same fact, twice

החברה לא עמדה בלוח הזמנים, ולפיכך בוטל ההסכם.

hakhevrá lo amdá belúakh hazmaním, ulefikhákh butál haheském

The company failed to meet the schedule, and the agreement was accordingly terminated. (official)

החברה לא עמדה בלוח הזמנים, אז ביטלו את ההסכם.

hakhevrá lo amdá belúakh hazmaním, az bitlú et haheském

The same content out loud: אז, and an impersonal plural instead of the passive.

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Calibration, not vocabulary, is what fails at this level. A well-written Hebrew paragraph runs mostly on לכן, אבל, עם זאת and וגם, and spends a heavy connector perhaps once, where the logical move genuinely deserves the reader's attention. Three אשר על כן in one page do not read as scholarly; they read as a writer who has just discovered a word.

Common Mistakes

1. Reaching for the heaviest connector every time. English primes this: therefore and however feel like the "proper written" forms of so and but, so learners map them onto the heaviest Hebrew items available. Hebrew's neutral written words are לכן and אבל, and they carry most paragraphs.

2. Dropping the ש from מכאן ש, כך ש and אף על פי ש. These connectors are two morphemes, not one word plus an optional particle. Without the ש the following clause has nothing to hang from.

3. Using כתוצאה מכך for an inference. If you have not shown a mechanism you are concluding, not tracing a cause, and the word is מכאן ש. That is a claim about your argument rather than about your Hebrew, which is exactly why it slips through.

4. Carrying written connectors into speech. Not an error, a mismatch — and just as visible in the other direction. Both of these are correct Hebrew; only one is a thing to say out loud.

✅ לא היה לנו מספיק זמן, ולפיכך דחינו את ההצבעה.

lo hayá lánu maspík zman, ulefikhákh dakhínu et hahatsba'á

We did not have enough time, and we accordingly postponed the vote. (a written sentence)

✅ לא היה לנו מספיק זמן, אז דחינו את ההצבעה.

lo hayá lánu maspík zman, az dakhínu et hahatsba'á

We didn't have enough time, so we put the vote off. (the same sentence in a meeting)

5. Signposting a list you never finish. ראשית creates an expectation of שנית. If your second point never arrives, the reader is still waiting for it at the end of the paragraph.

Key Takeaways

Sort these connectors by move, not by height: result, concession, addition, enumeration, framing.
Within the result family the connectors are not synonyms. כתוצאה מכך asserts causation, מכאן ש asserts an inference, משום כך names a reason, and לכן / לפיכך / על כן state a plain consequence.
מכאן ש, כך ש and אף על פי ש bind with ש and require a full clause. English has no equivalent habit.
לכן is the correct written default — a floor of about 29,000 Hebrew Wikipedia articles against 7,700 for לפיכך.
לפיכך is Mishnaic and completely standard; it appears twice in Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5.
אשר על כן has no dictionary entry in either source consulted and appears in 83 to 84 Wikipedia articles — roughly ninety times rarer than לפיכך, and spread across genres rather than confined to one.
The literary-only inventory — ברם, כי אם, שכן, הואיל ו־ — is on literary connectors, and it is for reading.

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