Cohesion and coherence

Readers feel whether a passage is cohesive and coherent. How are the words arranged so that it flows from start to finish and tells a story?

Definitions

Coherent: How each sentence ends and the next begins. Begin a sentence with familiar information, and end it with new or complex information.
Coherent: How all sentences cumulatively begin. The subject of each sentence should contain the main characters.

Cohesion

Cohesion > Clarity

There are three principles of clarity:

Make main characters the subjects of sentences.
Make important actions verbs.
Put old information before new information.

If you have to choose among these principles, choose the third. The cohesion of a passage is always more important than the clarity of individual sentences.

Cohesive writing flows, and each sentence fits together like a jigsaw puzzle. To write cohesively, the last few words of a sentence should set up information that appears in the first few words of the following sentence. This

Passive to place familiar information in the subject.

Old and new information

People learn by connecting new information to what the already know, so give readers old information before you give them new information.

Begin with familiar information

Familiar information comes in two forms:

Information in the sentence that they just read.
General knowledge that the readers already possess.

If you refer to information in a previous sentence with words such as “this”, “these”, “those”, “such”, “another”, etc., place them as close to the beginning of the sentence as possible:

The primary reason people go to college is to increase employment opportunities. Another reason is socializing.

End with information readers cannot anticipate

Each sentence should tell the reader something new, and readers prefer new information after information they read something familiar.

Begin with simple, end with complex

This is a combination of the first few rules. Readers find familiar informatin simple and unfamiliar information complex.

Coherence

Coherent writing paints an understandable and logical picture of your topic, the way all pieces in a puzzle add up to the final picture. A passage is coherent when the following are true:

The subjects of the sentence are related.
The sentences share common themes and ideas.
There is a sentence that states what the entire passage is about.

Topics

The topic of a sentence is not always its subject. Typically, a subject is defined as one of the following:

The doer of an action.
What the sentence is about—i.e., its topic.

While these statements are correct, they are not always true—not all subjects are agents, and sometimes the topic of a sentence is stated somewhere other than the grammatical subject.

“Topic” is a psychological term—it refers to the idea that readers expect a sentence to be about or refer something. State the topic towards the beginning of the sentence to make it more clear.

Readers judge a passage coherent based on how easily they can identify these two things:

Topics of individual sentences and clauses.
How the topics in a passage make up a related set of concepts.

How to revise topics

Planning ahead

Before you write a passage, list the topics and characters that you intend to write about. These can include flesh-and-blood characters and important concepts. These are short, concrete, familiar words that name the main characters of your story. Place these characters and concepts in the subjects of most of your sentences.

Analyze

Underline the first seven or eight words of every sentence until you reach a verb.
Underline the first five or six words of every clause.

Assess

Topics in titles

If you have trouble identifying the topics, give the passage a title. The words in the title often name important topics.

After you underline the passage, answer these questions:

Do the underlined words constitute a small set of related ideas? Will your readers understand how they are related? If not, revise.
Do the underlined words name the most important characters (real or abstract)? If not, revise.

Rewrite

Unless it is impossible or doesn’t make sense, name your topics in the subjects of each sentence.
Put the subjects/topics close to the beginning of your sentences.
Make sure these topics are familiar to your readers.

Qualifications

When you revise a passage to focus on topics, beware of the following:

Monotony: Don’t use the exact same phrase to begin a sentence.
Faked coherence: Conjunctions don’t equal coherence. Beginning a sentence with “Therefore” does not automatically connect it with the preceding sentence.

Beginning sentences

Get to the topic as soon as possible. If you see a lot of words before the subject/topic, revise.