Transition

A hard cut is the default and handles most of an edit. A transition is what you reach for when the join has to say something: a dissolve for time passing, a fade to black to close a section, a whip pan or masked wipe to tie two locations together. Editing software ships dozens of them and most are unusable.

The test is whether a viewer notices the effect itself. If they do, it needs to be earning that attention, which is why heavily transitioned edits date so fast while a well-cut interview from 20 years ago still plays fine today.