Bridging Inference Prompt: Connect the Dots Between Sentences

What Is a Bridging Inference?

A bridging inference is the unstated connection your mind builds between two consecutive sentences. Authors don’t spell out every link — they assume you’ll fill in the gaps using context, logic, and background knowledge.

Consider this pair of sentences: “The restaurant was empty. John decided to eat at home.” The author never says John wanted to eat at a busy restaurant, or that emptiness signaled poor quality. You inferred all of that. That’s a bridging inference.

When you miss a bridging inference, the text feels disjointed. Paragraphs don’t connect. Arguments seem to jump. The bridging inference prompt makes these invisible connections visible so you can understand why the author moved from point A to point B.

Running the Prompt: What You’ll Get

The PR012 prompt asks AI to reveal three things about any two consecutive passages:

1. The logical bridge — what unstated proposition connects idea A to idea B

2. What the author assumes you’ll fill in — the implicit reasoning step

3. What prior knowledge makes the connection clear — the background information required

This triple structure matters. Knowing the bridge tells you what’s implied. Knowing the assumption tells you what the author expects from readers. Knowing the prior knowledge tells you whether you’re missing context or just missed a clue.

The Role of Prior Knowledge

Bridging inferences depend heavily on what you already know. The same two sentences can be perfectly clear to an economist and completely opaque to someone else. The prompt helps you identify exactly what knowledge you’re missing.

This is especially useful when reading outside your field. Academic papers, technical documentation, and specialist journalism all assume disciplinary knowledge.

When to Use This Prompt

Use the bridging inference prompt when you notice:

Sudden topic shifts — the author moves from one subject to another without explicit transition

Conclusions that seem to come from nowhere — you understand each sentence but not how they connect

Dense technical writing — you’re reading outside your expertise and feel lost

Argument structures you can’t follow — you know there’s logic, but you can’t trace it

How Bridging Inference Differs from Regular Inference

The Inference Excavator (C053) finds conclusions implied by the text. Bridging inference finds connections between parts of the text.

Regular inference: What can I conclude from what’s stated?

Bridging inference: Why does sentence B follow sentence A?

Regular inference extracts meaning. Bridging inference maintains coherence. Both matter for deep reading, but they solve different problems.

Continue to the Read Between the Lines prompt (C055) for subtext and author attitude, or explore all tools in the Inference pillar.