coherence in essay can be achieved through

Table of Contents

Ai, ethics & human agency, collaboration, information literacy, writing process, coherence – how to achieve coherence in writing.

• © 2023 by Joseph M. Moxley - University of South Florida

Coherence refers to a style of writing where ideas, themes, and language connect logically, consistently, and clearly to guide the reader's understanding. By mastering coherence , alongside flow , inclusiveness , simplicity,  and unity , you'll be well-equipped to craft professional or academic pieces that engage and inform effectively. Acquire the skills to instill coherence in your work and discern it in the writings of others.

What is Coherence?

Coherence in writing refers to the logical connections and consistency that hold a text together, making it understandable and meaningful to the reader. Writers create coherence in three ways:

• logical consistency
• conceptual consistency
• linguistic consistency.

What is Logical Consistency?

• For instance, if they argue, “If it rains, the ground gets wet,” and later state, “It’s raining but the ground isn’t wet,” without additional explanation, this represents a logical inconsistency.

What is Conceptual Consistency?

• For example, if you are writing an essay arguing that regular exercise has multiple benefits for mental health, each paragraph should introduce and discuss a different benefit of exercise, all contributing to your main argument. Including a paragraph discussing the nutritional value of various foods, while interesting, would break the conceptual consistency, as it doesn’t directly relate to the benefits of exercise for mental health.

What is Linguistic Consistency?

• For example, if a writer jumps erratically between different tenses or switches point of view without clear demarcation, the reader might find it hard to follow the narrative, leading to a lack of linguistic coherence.

Related Concepts: Flow ; Given to New Contract ; Grammar ; Organization ; Organizational Structures ; Organizational Patterns ; Sentence Errors

Why Does Coherence Matter?

Coherence is crucial in writing as it ensures that the text is understandable and that the ideas flow logically from one to the next. When writing is coherent, readers can easily follow the progression of ideas, making the content more engaging and easier to comprehend. Coherence connects the dots for the reader, linking concepts, arguments, and details in a clear, logical manner.

Without coherence, even the most interesting or groundbreaking ideas can become muddled and lose their impact. A coherent piece of writing keeps the reader’s attention, demonstrates the writer’s control over their subject matter, and can effectively persuade, inform, or entertain. Thus, coherence contributes significantly to the effectiveness of writing in achieving its intended purpose.

How Do Writers Create Coherence in Writing?

• Your thesis statement serves as the guiding star of your paper. It sets the direction and focus, ensuring all subsequent points relate back to this central idea.
• Acknowledge and address potential counterarguments to strengthen your position and add depth to your writing.
• Use the genres and organizational patterns appropriate for your rhetorical situation . A deductive structure (general to specific) is often effective, guiding the reader logically through your argument. Yet different disciplines may privilege more inductive approaches , such as law and philosophy.
• When following a given-to-new order, writers move from what the reader already knows to new information. In formal or persuasive contexts, writers are careful to vet new information for the reader following information literacy laws and conventions .
• Strategic repetition of crucial terms and your thesis helps your readers follow your main ideas and evidence for claims 
• While repetition is useful, varying language with synonyms can prevent redundancy and keep the reader engaged.
• Parallelism in sentences can provide rhythm and clarity, making complex ideas easier to follow.
• Consistent use of pronouns avoids confusion and helps in maintaining a clear line of thought.
• Arrange your ideas in a sequence that naturally builds from one point to the next, ensuring each paragraph flows smoothly into the next .
• Signposting , or using phrases that indicate what’s coming next or what just happened, can help orient the reader within your argument.
• Don’t bother repeating your argument in your conclusion. Prioritize conciseness. Yet end with a call to action or appeal to kairos and ethos .

Recommended Resources

• Organization
• Organizational Patterns

Brevity - Say More with Less

Clarity (in Speech and Writing)

Coherence - How to Achieve Coherence in Writing

Flow - How to Create Flow in Writing

Inclusivity - Inclusive Language

The Elements of Style - The DNA of Powerful Writing

Suggested Edits

• Please select the purpose of your message. * - Corrections, Typos, or Edits Technical Support/Problems using the site Advertising with Writing Commons Copyright Issues I am contacting you about something else
• Your full name
• Your email address *
• Page URL needing edits *
• Phone This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Other Topics:

Citation - Definition - Introduction to Citation in Academic & Professional Writing

• Joseph M. Moxley

Explore the different ways to cite sources in academic and professional writing, including in-text (Parenthetical), numerical, and note citations.

Collaboration - What is the Role of Collaboration in Academic & Professional Writing?

Collaboration refers to the act of working with others or AI to solve problems, coauthor texts, and develop products and services. Collaboration is a highly prized workplace competency in academic...

Genre may reference a type of writing, art, or musical composition; socially-agreed upon expectations about how writers and speakers should respond to particular rhetorical situations; the cultural values; the epistemological assumptions...

Grammar refers to the rules that inform how people and discourse communities use language (e.g., written or spoken English, body language, or visual language) to communicate. Learn about the rhetorical...

Information Literacy - Discerning Quality Information from Noise

Information Literacy refers to the competencies associated with locating, evaluating, using, and archiving information. In order to thrive, much less survive in a global information economy — an economy where information functions as a...

Mindset refers to a person or community’s way of feeling, thinking, and acting about a topic. The mindsets you hold, consciously or subconsciously, shape how you feel, think, and act–and...

Rhetoric: Exploring Its Definition and Impact on Modern Communication

Learn about rhetoric and rhetorical practices (e.g., rhetorical analysis, rhetorical reasoning,  rhetorical situation, and rhetorical stance) so that you can strategically manage how you compose and subsequently produce a text...

Style, most simply, refers to how you say something as opposed to what you say. The style of your writing matters because audiences are unlikely to read your work or...

The Writing Process - Research on Composing

The writing process refers to everything you do in order to complete a writing project. Over the last six decades, researchers have studied and theorized about how writers go about...

Writing Studies

Writing studies refers to an interdisciplinary community of scholars and researchers who study writing. Writing studies also refers to an academic, interdisciplinary discipline – a subject of study. Students in...

Featured Articles

Academic Writing – How to Write for the Academic Community

Professional Writing – How to Write for the Professional World

Credibility & Authority – How to Be Credible & Authoritative in Speech & Writing

Pasco-Hernando State College

• Unity and Coherence in Essays
• The Writing Process
• Paragraphs and Essays
• Proving the Thesis/Critical Thinking
• Appropriate Language

Test Yourself

• Essay Organization Quiz
• Sample Essay - Fairies
• Sample Essay - Modern Technology

Related Pages

• Proving the Thesis

Unity is the idea that all parts of the writing work to achieve the same goal: proving the thesis. Just as the content of a paragraph should focus on a topic sentence, the content of an essay must focus on the thesis.  The introduction paragraph introduces the thesis, the body paragraphs each have a proof point (topic sentence) with content that proves the thesis, and the concluding paragraph sums up the proof and restates the thesis. Extraneous information in any part of the essay which is not related to the thesis is distracting and takes away from the strength of proving the thesis.

An essay must have coherence. The sentences must flow smoothly and logically from one to the next as they support the purpose of  each paragraph in proving the thesis. .

Just as the last sentence in a paragraph must connect back to the topic sentence of the paragraph, the last paragraph of the essay should connect back to the thesis by reviewing the proof and restating the thesis.

Example of Essay with Problems of Unity and Coherence

Here is an example of a brief essay that includes a paragraph that  does not  support the thesis “Many people are changing their diets to be healthier.”

     People are concerned about pesticides, steroids, and antibiotics in the food they eat.  Many now shop for organic foods since they don’t have the pesticides used in conventionally grown food.  Meat from chicken and cows that are not given steroids or antibiotics are gaining in popularity even though they are much more expensive. More and more, people are eliminating pesticides, steroids, and antibiotics from their diets.

    Eating healthier also is beneficial to the environment since there are less pesticides poisoning the earth. Pesticides getting into the waterways is creating a problem with drinking water.  Historically, safe drinking water has been a problem. It is believed the Ancient Egyptians drank beer since the water was not safe to drink.  Brewing beer killed the harmful organisms and bacteria in the water from the Nile.

     There is a growing concern about eating genetically modified foods, and people are opting for non-GMO diets.  Some people say there are more allergic reactions and other health problems resulting from these foods.  Others are concerned because there are no long-term studies which clearly show no adverse health effects such as cancers or other illnesses. Avoiding GMO food is another way people are eating healthier food.

See how just one paragraph  can take away from the effectiveness of the essay in showing how people are changing to healthier food since the unity and coherence are affected.  There is no longer unity among all the paragraphs.  The thought pattern is disjointed and the essay loses its coherence.

Transitions and Logical Flow of Ideas

Transitions are words, groups of words, or sentences that connect one sentence to another or one paragraph to another.

They promote a logical flow from one idea to the next and overall unity and coherence.

While transitions are not needed in every sentence or at the end of every paragraph, they are missed when they are omitted since the flow of thoughts becomes disjointed or even confusing.

There are different types of transitions:

Time – before, after, during, in the meantime, nowadays

Space – over, around, under

Examples – for instance, one example is

Comparison – on the other hand, the opposing view

Consequence – as a result, subsequently

These are just a few examples.  The idea is to paint a clear, logical connection between sentences and between paragraphs.

• Printer-friendly version

Achieving coherence

“A piece of writing is coherent when it elicits the response: ‘I follow you. I see what you mean.’ It is incoherent when it elicits the response: ‘I see what you're saying here, but what has it got to do with the topic at hand or with what you just told me above?’ ” - Johns, A.M

Transitions

Parallelism, challenge task, what is coherence.

Coherence in a piece of writing means that the reader can easily understand it. Coherence is about making everything flow smoothly. The reader can see that everything is logically arranged and connected, and relevance to the central focus of the essay is maintained throughout.

Repetition in a piece of writing does not always demonstrate cohesion.   Study these sentences:

So, how does repetition as a cohesive device work?

When a pronoun is used, sometimes what the pronoun refers to (ie, the referent) is not always clear. Clarity is achieved by  repeating a key noun or synonym . Repetition is a cohesive device used deliberately to improve coherence in a text.

In the following text, decide ifthe referent for the pronoun  it   is clear. Otherwise, replace it  with the key noun English  where clarity is needed.

Click here to view the revised text.

Suggested improvement

English has almost become an international language. Except for Chinese, more people speak it (clear reference; retain)  than any other language. Spanish is the official language of more countries in the world, but more countries have English ( it is replaced with a key noun) as their official or unofficial second language. More than 70% of the world's mail is written in English ( it is replaced with a key noun).  It (clear reference; retain) is the primary language on the Internet.

Sometimes, repetition of a key noun is preferred even when the reference is clear. In the following text, it is clear that it  refers to the key noun gold , but when used throughout the text, the style becomes monotonous.

Improved text: Note where the key noun gold is repeated. The deliberate repetition creates interest and adds maturity to the writing style.

Gold , a precious metal, is prized for two important characteristics. First of all, gold has a lustrous beauty that is resistant to corrosion. Therefore, it is suitable for jewellery, coins and ornamental purposes. Gold never needs to be polished and will remain beautiful forever. For example, a Macedonian coin remains as untarnished today as the day it was made 23 centuries ago. Another important characteristic of gold is its usefulness to industry and science. For many years, it has been used in hundreds of industrial applications. The most recent use of gold is in astronauts’ suits. Astronauts wear gold -plated shields when they go outside spaceships in space. In conclusion, gold is treasured not only for its beauty but also its utility.

Pronoun + Repetition of key noun

Sometimes, greater cohesion can be achieved by using a pronoun followed by an appropriate key noun or synonym (a word with a similar meaning).

Transitions are like traffic signals. They guide the reader from one idea to the next. They signal a range of relationships between sentences, such as comparison, contrast, example and result. Click here for a more comprehensive list of Transitions (Logical Organisers) .

Test yourself: How well do you understand transitions?

Which of the three alternatives should follow the transition or logical organiser in capital letters to complete the second sentence?

Using transitions/logical organisers

Improve the coherence of the following paragraph by adding transitions in the blank spaces. Use the italicised hint in brackets to help you choose an apporpriate transition for each blank. If you need to, review the list of Transitions (Logical Organisers)   before you start.

Using transitions

Choose the most appropriate transition from the options given to complete the article:

Overusing transitions

While the use of appropriate transitions can improve coherence (as the previous practice activity shows), it can also be counterproductive if transitions are overused. Use transitions carefully to enhance and clarify the logical connection between ideas in extended texts. Write a range of sentences and vary sentence openings. 

Study the following examples:

Identifying cohesive devices

Cohesion And Coherence In Essay Writing

Table of contents, introduction.

Coherent essays are identified by relevance to the central topic. They communicate a meaningful message to a specific audience and maintain pertinence to the main focus. In a coherent essay, the sentences and ideas flow smoothly and, as a result, the reader can follow the ideas developed without any issues.

To achieve coherence in an essay, writers use lexical and grammatical cohesive devices. Examples of these cohesive devices are repetition, synonymy, antonymy, meronymy, substitutions , and anaphoric or cataphoric relations between sentences. We will discuss these devices in more detail below.

This article will discuss how to write a coherent essay. We will be focusing on the five major points.

• We will start with definitions of coherence and cohesion.
• Then, we will give examples of how a text can achieve cohesion.
• We will see how a text can be cohesive but not coherent.
• The structure of a coherent essay will also be discussed.
• Finally, we will look in detail at ways to improve cohesion and write a coherent essay.

Before illustrating how to write coherent essays, let us start with the definitions of coherence and cohesion and list the ways we can achieve cohesion in a coherent text.

Definitions Cohesion and Coherence

In general, coherence and cohesion refer to how a text is structured so that the elements it is constituted of can stick together and contribute to a meaningful whole. In coherent essays, writers use grammatical and lexical cohesive techniques so that ideas can flow meaningfully and logically.

What is coherence?

Coherence refers to the quality of forming a unified consistent whole. We can describe a text as being coherent if it is semantically meaningful, that is if the ideas flow logically to produce an understandable entity.

If a text is coherent it is logically ordered and connected. It is clear, consistent, and understandable.

Coherence is related to the macro-level features of a text which enable it to have a sense as a whole.

What is cohesion?

Cohesion is commonly defined as the grammatical and lexical connections that tie a text together, contributing to its meaning (i.e. coherence.)

While coherence is related to the macro-level features of a text, cohesion is concerned with its micro-level – the words, the phrases, and the sentences and how they are connected to form a whole.

If the elements of a text are cohesive, they are united and work together or fit well together.

To summarize, coherence refers to how the ideas of the text flow logically and make a text semantically meaningful as a whole. Cohesion is what makes the elements (e.g. the words, phrases, clauses, and sentences) of a text stick together to form a whole.

How to Achieve Cohesion And Coherence In Essay Writing

There are two types of cohesion: lexical and grammatical. Writers connect sentences and ideas in their essays using both lexical and grammatical cohesive devices.

Lexical cohesion

We can achieve cohesion through lexical cohesion by using these techniques:

• Repetition.

Now let’s look at these in more detail.

Repeating words may contribute to cohesion. Repetition creates cohesive ties within the text.

• Birds are beautiful. I like birds.

You can use a word or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word to achieve cohesion.

• Paul saw a snake under the mattress. The serpent was probably hiding there for a long time.

Antonymy refers to the use of a word of opposite meaning. This is often used to create links between the elements of a text.

• Old movies are boring, the new ones are much better.

This refers to the use of a word that denotes a subcategory of a more general class.

• I saw a cat . The animal was very hungry and looked ill.

Relating a superordinate term (i.e. animal) to a corresponding subordinate term (i.e. cat) may create more cohesiveness between sentences and clauses.

Meronymy is another way to achieve cohesion. It refers to the use of a word that denotes part of something but which is used to refer to the whole of it for instance faces can be used to refer to people as in “I see many faces here”. In the following example, hands refer to workers.

• More workers are needed. We need more hands to finish the work.

Grammatical cohesion

Grammatical cohesion refers to the grammatical relations between text elements. This includes the use of:

• Cataphora .
• Substitutions.
• Conjunctions and transition words.

Let us illustrate the above devices with some examples.

Anaphora is when you use a word referring back to another word used earlier in a text or conversation.

• Jane was brilliant. She got the best score.

The pronoun “she” refers back to the proper noun “Jane”.

Cataphora is the opposite of anaphora. Cataphora refers to the use of a word or phrase that refers to or stands for a following word or phrase.

• Here he comes our hero. Please, welcome John .

The pronoun “he” refers back to the proper noun “John”.

Ellipsis refers to the omission from speech or writing of a word or words that are superfluous or able to be understood from contextual clues.

• Liz had some chocolate bars, and Nancy an ice cream.

In the above example, “had” in “Nancy an ice cream” is left because it can be understood (or presupposed) as it was already mentioned previously in the sentence.

Elliptic elements can be also understood from the context as in:

• A: Where are you going?

Substitutions

Substitutions refer to the use of a word to replace another word.

• A: Which T-shirt would you like?
• B: I would like the pink one .

Conjunctions transition words

Conjunctions and transition words are parts of speech that connect words, phrases, clauses, or sentences.

• Examples of conjunctions: but, or, and, although, in spite of, because,
• Examples of transition words: however, similarly, likewise, specifically, consequently, for this reason, in contrast to, accordingly, in essence, chiefly, finally.

Here are some examples:

• I called Tracy and John.
• He was tired but happy.
• She likes neither chocolates nor cookies.
• You can either finish the work or ask someone to do it for you.
• He went to bed after he had done his homework.
• Although she is very rich, she isn’t happy.
• I was brought up to be responsible. Similarly , I will try to teach my kids how to take responsibility for their actions.

Cohesive but not coherent texts

Sometimes, a text may be cohesively connected, yet may still be incoherent.

Learners may wrongly think that simply linking sentences together will lead to a coherent text.

Here is an example of a text in which sentences are cohesively connected, yet the overall coherence is lacking:

The player threw the ball toward the goalkeeper. Balls are used in many sports. Most balls are spheres, but American football is an ellipsoid. Fortunately, the goalkeeper jumped to catch the ball. The crossbar in the soccer game is made of iron. The goalkeeper was standing there.

The sentences and phrases in the above text are decidedly cohesive but not coherent.

There is a use of:

• Repetition of: the ball, goalkeeper, the crossbar.
• Conjunctions and transition words: but, fortunately.

The use of the above cohesive devices does not result in a meaningful and unified whole. This is because the writer presents material that is unrelated to the topic. Why should a writer talk about what the crossbar is made of? And is talking about the form balls in sports relevant in this context? What is the central focus of the text?

A coherent essay has to be cohesively connected and logically expressive of the central topic.

How to write a coherent essay?

1. start with an outline.

An outline is the general plan of your essays. It contains the ideas you will include in each paragraph and the sequence in which these ideas will be mentioned.

It is important to have an outline before starting to write. Spending a few minutes on the outline can be rewarding. An outline will organize your ideas and the end product can be much more coherent.

Here is how you can outline your writing so that you can produce a coherent essay:

• Start with the thesis statement – the sentence that summarizes the topic of your writing.
• Brainstorm the topic for a few minutes. Write down all the ideas related to the topic.
• Sift the ideas brainstormed in the previous step to identify only the ideas worth including in your essay.
• Organize ideas in a logical order so that your essay reflects the unified content that you want to communicate.
• Each idea has to be treated in a separate paragraph.
• Think of appropriate transitions between the different ideas.
• Under each idea/paragraph, write down enough details to support your idea.

After identifying and organizing your ideas into different paragraphs, they have to fit within the conventional structure of essays.

2. Structure your essay

It is also important to structure your essay so that you the reader can identify the organization of the different parts of your essay and how each paragraph leads to the next one.

Here is a structure of an essay

3. Structure your paragraphs

Paragraphs have to be well-organized. The structure of each paragraph should have:

• A topic sentence that is usually placed at the beginning,
• Supporting details that give further explanation of the topic sentence,
• And a concluding sentence that wraps up the content of the paragraph.

The supporting sentences in each paragraph must flow smoothly and logically to support the purpose of the topic sentence. Similarly, each paragraph has to serve the thesis statement, the main topic of the essay.

4. Relevance to the main topic

No matter how long the essay is, we should make sure that we stick to the topic we want to talk about. Coherence is about making everything flow smoothly to create unity. So, sentences and ideas must be relevant to the central thesis statement.

The writer has to maintain the flow of ideas to serve the main focus of the essay.

5. Stick to the purpose of the type of essay you’re-writing

Essays must be clear and serve a purpose and direction. This means that the writer’s thoughts must not go astray in developing the purpose of the essay.

Essays are of different types and have different purposes. Accordingly, students have to stick to the main purpose of each genre of writing.

• An expository essay aims to inform, describe, or explain a topic, using essential facts to teach the reader about a topic.
• A descriptive essay intends to transmit a detailed description of a person, event, experience, or object. The aim is to make the reader perceive what is being described.
• A narrative essay attempts to tell a story that has a purpose. Writers use storytelling techniques to communicate an experience or an event.
• In argumentative essays, writers present an objective analysis of the different arguments about a topic and provide an opinion or a conclusion of positive or negative implications. The aim is to persuade the reader of your point.

6. Use cohesive devices and signposting phrases

Sentences should be connected using appropriate cohesive devices as discussed above:

Cohesive devices such as conjunctions and transition words are essential in providing clarity to your essay. But we can add another layer of clarity to guide the reader throughout the essay by using signpost signals.

What is signposting in writing?

Signposting refers to the use of phrases or words that guide readers to understand the direction of your essay. An essay should take the reader on a journey throughout the argumentation or discussion. In that journey, the paragraphs are milestones. Using signpost signals assists the reader in identifying where you want to guide them. Signposts serve to predict what will happen, remind readers of where they are at important stages along the process, and show the direction of your essay.

Essay signposting phrases

The following are some phrases you can use to signpost your writing:

It should be noted though that using cohesive devices or signposting language may not automatically lead to a coherent text. Some texts can be highly cohesive but remain incoherent. Appropriate cohesion and signposting are essential to coherence but they are not enough. To be coherent, an essay has to follow, in addition to using appropriate cohesive devices, all the tips presented in this article.

7. Draft, revise, and edit

After preparing the ground for the essay, students produce their first draft. This is the first version of the essay. Other subsequent steps are required.

The next step is to revise the first draft to rearrange, add, or remove paragraphs, ideas, sentences, or words.

The questions that must be addressed are the following:

• Is the essay clear? Is it meaningful? Does it serve the thesis statement (the main topic)?
• Are there sufficient details to convey ideas?
• Are there any off-topic ideas that you have to do without?
• Have you included too much information? Does your writing stray off-topic?
• Do the ideas flow in a logical order?
• Have you used appropriate cohesive devices and transition words when needed?

Once the revision is done, it is high time for the editing stage. Editing involves proofreading and correcting mistakes in grammar and mechanics. Pay attention to:

• Verb tense.
• Subject-verb agreement.
• Sentence structure. Have you included a subject a verb and an object (if the verb is transitive.)
• Punctuation.
• Capitalization.

Coherent essays are identified by relevance to the thesis statement. The ideas and sentences of coherent essays flow smoothly. One can follow the ideas discussed without any problems. Lexical and grammatical cohesive devices are used to achieve coherence. However, these devices are not sufficient. To maintain relevance to the main focus of the text, there is a need for a whole process of collecting ideas, outlining, reviewing, and editing to create a coherent whole.

More writing lessons are here .

Related Pages:

• Figures of speech
• Articles about writing

• WRITING SKILLS

Coherence in Writing

Search SkillsYouNeed:

Writing Skills:

• A - Z List of Writing Skills

The Essentials of Writing

• Common Mistakes in Writing
• Introduction to Grammar
• Improving Your Grammar
• Active and Passive Voice
• Punctuation
• Clarity in Writing
• Writing Concisely
• Gender Neutral Language
• Figurative Language
• When to Use Capital Letters
• Using Plain English
• Writing in UK and US English
• Understanding (and Avoiding) Clichés
• The Importance of Structure
• Know Your Audience
• Know Your Medium
• Formal and Informal Writing Styles
• Note-Taking from Reading
• Note-Taking for Verbal Exchanges
• Creative Writing
• Top Tips for Writing Fiction
• Writer's Voice
• Writing for Children
• Writing for Pleasure
• Writing for the Internet
• Journalistic Writing
• Technical Writing
• Academic Writing
• Editing and Proofreading

Writing Specific Documents

• Writing a CV or Résumé
• Writing a Covering Letter
• Writing a Personal Statement
• Writing Reviews
• Using LinkedIn Effectively
• Business Writing
• Study Skills
• Writing Your Dissertation or Thesis

Subscribe to our FREE newsletter and start improving your life in just 5 minutes a day.

You'll get our 5 free 'One Minute Life Skills' and our weekly newsletter.

We'll never share your email address and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Have you ever read a piece of writing and wondered what point the writer was trying to make? If so, that piece of writing probably lacked coherence. Coherence is an important aspect of good writing—as important as good grammar or spelling. However, it is also rather harder to learn how to do it, because it is not a matter of simple rules.

Coherent writing moves smoothly between ideas. It guides the reader through an argument or series of points using signposts and connectors. It generally has a clear structure and consistent tone, with little or no repetition. Coherent writing feels planned —usually because it is. This page provides some tips to help you to develop your ability to write coherently.

Defining Coherence

Dictionary definition of coherence

cohere , v. to stick together, to be consistent, to fit together in a consistent, orderly whole.

coherence , a sticking together, consistency.

Source: Chambers English Dictionary, 1989 edition.

The dictionary definition of coherence is clear enough—but what does that mean in practical terms for writers?

Once you have achieved coherence in your writing, you will find that:

Your sentences and ideas are connected and flow together;

Readers can move easily through the text from one sentence, paragraph or idea to the next; and

Readers will be able to follow the ideas and main points of the text.

On the other hand, a text that is NOT coherent jumps between ideas without making clear connections between them. It is often hard to follow the argument. Readers may find themselves unclear about the point of particular paragraphs or even whole sections. There may be odd sentences that do not fit well with the previous or following sentence, or paragraphs that repeat earlier ideas.

All these issues provide pointers for how to develop coherence.

Elements of Coherence

There are several different elements that contribute to coherence, or are closely linked to the concept.

They include:

Cohesion , or whether ideas are linked within and between sentences.

Unity , or the extent to which a sentence, paragraph or section focuses on a single idea or group or ideas. In any given paragraph, every sentence should be relevant to a single focus.

A joint effort

Together, cohesion and unity mean that sentences and paragraphs are connected around a central theme.

• Flow , or how the reader is led through the text. Some of this is about the ordering of ideas, but it also takes into account issues like phrasing, rhythm and style. Some people define flow as the quality that makes writing engaging and easy to read.

Levels of Coherence

We can consider coherence at several different levels. These include:

Within sentences. A sentence is coherent when it flows naturally, and uses correct grammar , spelling and punctuation . Coherence also includes the use of the most appropriate words, and avoidance of redundancy.

Between sentences . Coherence between sentences means that each sentence flows logically and naturally from the previous one. Connections are made between them so that readers can see the flow of ideas, and how each sentence is linked to the previous one.

Within paragraphs . This is a logical extension of coherence between sentences. Coherence within a paragraph means that the sentences within the paragraph work together as a whole to present a complete thesis or idea.

Why single-sentence paragraphs don’t work

This definition of ‘within paragraph’ coherence explains why you should (almost) never use single-sentence paragraphs. A single sentence is (almost) never going to be able to provide a complete summary of your thesis or idea.

Between paragraphs . For most pieces of writing, you will also need to consider how the paragraphs fit together. Each paragraph covers an idea or thesis—and must then be connected logically to the next paragraph, so that your overall thesis is built step-by-step.

Between subsections or sections . This final level of coherence is only really important for longer documents. You must create a logical flow between different sections, to guide your reader from one to the next so that they can follow the development of your ideas.

Techniques to Improve Coherence

The first step to improving coherence is to plan your writing in advance.

Decide on the main point that you want to make, and the ideas that will lead your reader towards your point. It is also helpful to consider your planned audience, and what they want from your text.

There is  more about this in our page on Know Your Audience . You may also find it helpful to read our page on Know Your Medium , to check whether there is anything about your publishing medium that you need to consider ahead of starting to write.

There are some techniques that you can use to help improve coherence within your writing. These include:

Using transitional expressions and phrases to signal connections

Words and phrases like ‘however’, ‘because’, ‘therefore’, ‘additionally’, and ‘on the one hand... on the other’ can be used to signal connections between sentences and paragraphs.

WARNING! Real connections needed!

Transitional phrases and words should only be used where the ideas really are connected.

Just inserting transitional expressions will not connect your ideas. Instead, you need to create a reasonable progression of ideas through a paragraph or section.

You also need to use transitional expressions sparingly. Not all ideas need an obvious link—and sometimes putting one in can seem awkward and contrived.

Using repeating forms or parallel structures to emphasise links between ideas

Generally speaking, repetition of words and phrases is unadvisable.

However, used sparingly, you may be able to harness repetition as a way to signal connections between sentences or ideas.

For example, many research papers have a section setting out the limitations of the study. These limitations can often be quite diverse, which makes for a rather disjointed section. To overcome this issue, writers often use the form ‘First... Second... Finally...’ to demonstrate the links between the disparate ideas.

Using pronouns and synonyms to eliminate unnecessary repetition

Repetition is often the enemy of coherence because it interrupts your movement through the writing. You tend to get distracted by the repeated words, and lose the thread of the argument or idea.

Pronouns and synonyms are a good way to avoid repeating words and phrases. However, care is needed when using them, to avoid ambiguity. It is advisable NOT to use pronouns following a sentence with two elements that might take the same pronoun.

For example:

John was sure that Tom was wrong. He had made the same argument last week.

Who made the same argument last week? John or Tom?

It is better to use at least one name again than create ambiguity.

TOP TIP! Come back later

It is often hard to detect ambiguity in your own writing because you know what you wanted to say.

It is therefore a good idea to leave any piece of writing overnight, and read it again in the morning. This will often identify problems such as ambiguous pronouns, and give you a chance to revise them.

Revisit, Revise and Review

Alongside planning, the single most important thing that you can do to improve the coherence of a piece of writing is to review and revise it with the reader’s needs in mind.

When you have finished a piece of writing, put it aside for a while. Overnight is ideal, but longer is fine. Once you have had a chance to forget precisely what you meant, read it over again as if you were coming to it for the first time.

As you start to read, consider the focus of your text: the main point that you want to make.

With that in mind, consciously examine whether the ideas flow clearly through your sentences, paragraphs and sections. Can the reader grasp your argument and follow it through the text? Is there an obvious conclusion?

While you are reading, you should also consider whether there are any very long sentences. If so, shorten them, using transitional words or phrases to link them together effectively. This will make your writing easier to read, and it will naturally flow better.

A Final Thought

It is not always easy to know how to create more coherent writing.

The best way to do so is to plan your writing, and then review it carefully. You should particularly consider your focus, and your readers’ needs. In doing so, you may find it helpful to use some of the techniques described on this page—but they will not, in themselves, be sufficient without the planning and review.

Continue to: Writing Concisely Using Plain English

See also: The Importance of Structure in Writing Editing and Proofreading Copywriting

How Coherence in Writing Facilitates Manuscript Acceptance

Coherence is an essential quality for good academic writing . In academic writing, the flow of ideas from one sentence to the next should be smooth and logical. Without cohesion, the reader will not understand the main points that you are trying to make. It also hampers readability. Cohesion necessarily precedes coherence. There is a difference between cohesion and coherence: cohesion is achieved when sentences are connected at the sentence level, whereas as coherence is achieved when ideas are connected. In addition, cohesion focuses on the grammar and style of your paper.

What is Coherence in Writing?

Coherence also means “clarity of expression” and it is created when correct vocabulary and grammar are used. After all, the goal of writing is to benefit the readers. Without both coherence and cohesion, the readers may detect choppiness in the text and feel as if there are gaps in the ideas presented. Needless to say, texts without coherence are difficult to read and understand. It defeats the whole purpose of writing, which is to relay ideas in a clear and efficient manner. There are strategies that you can use to ensure coherence and cohesion in academic writing.

Examples of Cohesive and Non-Cohesive Paragraphs

Paragraph coherence and cohesion results in paragraph unity . To ensure that your paragraphs have unity, there are two things to keep in mind: it must have a single topic (found in the topic sentence) and sentences provide more detail than the topic sentence, while maintaining the focus on the idea presented. The paragraph below shows a lack of unity:

Non-cohesive sample: Dogs are canines that people domesticated a long time ago. Wolves are predecessors of dogs and they help people in a variety of ways. There are various reasons for owning a dog, and the most important is companionship.

Cohesive sample: Dogs are canines that people domesticated a long time ago, primarily for practical reasons. Even though dogs descended from wolves, they are tame and can be kept in households. Since they are tame, people have various reasons for owning a dog, such as companionship.

Notice that the ideas in the non-cohesive sample are not arranged logically. The sentences are not connected by transitions and give the readers new ideas that are not found in the topic sentence. Thus, the paragraph is hard to read, leaving readers confused about the topic. On the other hand, the cohesive sample has ideas arranged logically. All ideas in this sample flow from the topic sentence. In addition, they give more details about the topic while maintaining their focus on the topic sentence.

Establishing Coherence

It is important to focus on coherence when writing at the sentence level. However, cohesion smoothens the flow of writing and should be established. There are various ways to ensure coherent writing :

• Write sentences that flow by varying the lengths and structures, the use of correct punctuation, and broadening your word choices
• Use simple transitions, such as “in addition, additionally, furthermore, therefore, thus, on the contrary, by the same token, at the same time, in other words, etc.”
• Repeat your keywords but be careful of excessive repetition
• Repeat sentence structures, which is used as a rhetorical technique rather than cohesion to highlight parallelism between sentences
• Ensure thematic consistency
• Start every sentence or paragraph with information that hints at the content of the next sentence

Academic writing is improved by coherence and cohesion. Without coherence and cohesion, readers will become confused and eventually disinterested in the article.  Your ideas then become lost and the primary objective of writing is not achieved.

Tips and Strategies

There are six ways for creating coherence, which you will find useful while polishing your manuscript. Creating coherence is not as difficult as it seems, but you will need the right tools and strategies to achieve it.

• >Lexis creates cohesion using synonyms, hyponyms, and superordinates. The use of lexical chains creates variety in writing and avoids monotony.
• Reference creates cohesion by using possessive pronouns (e.g. your, their, etc.), pronouns (e.g. she, me, etc.), and determiners (e.g. those, these, etc.).
• Substitution, which is the use of a different word in place of a previously mentioned word (e.g. “I bought a designer bag today. She did the same.”)
• Ellipsis is the removal or omission of words because their meaning is implied through context (e.g. “He goes to yoga classes in the afternoon. I hope I can too.”)
• Cohesive nouns are also called umbrella nouns because they summarize many words in one.
• Conjunctions include words that list ideas (e.g. first, next, then, lastly, etc.)

Academic writing should be concise, coherent, and cohesive. Maintaining these three qualities involves using a number of strategies to impart ideas to the reader. After all, that is the whole point of any type of writing.

Thanks for this nice post. It is very useful.

rich info, thank you.

Thanks for the well explained meaning of cohesion and coherence, how ever, I rated this post with 5 🌟 to show my appreciation, once again thanks 😂😀😀

Nice content 👍🏻

Rate this article Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Enago Academy's Most Popular Articles

• Language & Grammar
• Reporting Research

How to Avoid Run-on Sentences in Academic Writing

When writing a paper, are you more focused on ideas or writing style? For most…

How to Improve Your Academic Writing Using Language Corpora

No matter how brilliant a researcher you are, you must be able to write about…

• Global Spanish Webinars
• Old Webinars

Cómo Dominar el Arte de Escribir Manuscritos en Inglés

Consejos de corrección Errores comunes de manuscritos Aplicación de la gramática inglesa Consejos sobre redacción…

• Global Japanese Webinars
• Webinar Mobile App

英語での論文執筆をマスターする

英語でのライティングスキルの重要性 論文英語の組み立て 日本人によくある英語の間違い 論文執筆の基本

• Infographic

Top 10 Tips to Increase Academic Vocabulary for Researchers

Improving academic vocabulary is an important skill for all researchers.  Academic vocabulary refers to the words…

Avoid These Common Grammatical Errors in Your Paper

Manuscript Drafting: Why is Subject-Verb Agreement Important?

Sign-up to read more

Subscribe for free to get unrestricted access to all our resources on research writing and academic publishing including:

• 2000+ blog articles
• 50+ Webinars
• 10+ Expert podcasts
• 50+ Infographics
• 10+ Checklists
• Research Guides

We hate spam too. We promise to protect your privacy and never spam you.

I am looking for Editing/ Proofreading services for my manuscript Tentative date of next journal submission:

What should universities' stance be on AI tools in research and academic writing?

Use of cookies

Lund University uses cookies to ensure that the website functions properly and to improve your experience.

Read more in our cookie policy

• AWELU contents
• Writing at university
• Different kinds of student texts
• Understanding instructions and stylesheets
• Understanding essay/exam questions
• Peer review instructions
• Dealing with feedback
• Checklist for writers
• Research writing resources
• Administrative writing resources
• LU language policy
• Introduction
• What characterises academic writing?
• The heterogeneity of academic writing
• Three-part essays
• IMRaD essays
• How to get started on your response paper
• Student literature review
• Annotated bibliography
• Three versions of the RA
• Examples of specificity within disciplines
• Reviews (review articles and book reviews)
• Popular science writing
• Research posters
• Grant proposals
• Writing for Publication
• Salutations
• Structuring your email
• Direct and indirect approaches
• Useful email phrases
• Language tips for email writers
• Writing memos
• Meeting terminology
• The writing process
• Identifying your audience
• Using invention techniques
• Research question
• Thesis statement
• Developing reading strategies
• Taking notes
• Identifying language resources
• Choosing a writing tool
• Framing the text: Title and reference list
• Structure of the whole text
• Structuring the argument
• Structure of introductions
• Structure within sections of the text
• Structure within paragraphs
• Signposting the structure
• Using sources
• What needs to be revised?
• How to revise
• Many vs. much
• Other quantifiers
• Quantifiers in a table
• Miscellaneous quantifiers
• Adjectives and adverbs
• Capitalisation
• Sentence fragment
• Run-on sentences
• What or which?
• Singular noun phrases connected by "or"
• Singular noun phrases connected by "either/or"
• Connected singular and plural noun phrases
• Noun phrases conjoined by "and"
• Subjects containing "along with", "as well as", and "besides"
• Indefinite pronouns and agreement
• Sums of money and periods of time
• Words that indicate portions
• Uncountable nouns
• Dependent clauses and agreement
• Agreement with the right noun phrase
• Some important exceptions and words of advice
• Atypical nouns
• The major word classes
• The morphology of the major word classes
• Words and phrases
• Elements in the noun phrase
• Classes of nouns
• Determiners
• Elements in the verb phrase
• Classes of main verbs
• Auxiliary verbs
• Primary auxiliary verbs
• Modal auxiliary verbs
• Meanings of modal auxiliaries
• Marginal auxiliary verbs
• Time and tense
• Simple and progressive forms
• The perfect
• Active and passive voice
• Adjective phrases
• Adverb phrases
• Personal pronouns
• Dummy pronouns
• Possessive pronouns
• Interrogative pronouns
• Indefinite pronouns
• Quantifiers
• Prepositions and prepositional phrases
• More on adverbials
• The order of subjects and verbs
• Subject-Verb agreement
• Hyphen and dash
• English spelling rules
• Commonly confused words
• Differences between British and American spelling
• Vocabulary awareness
• Useful words and phrases
• Using abbreviations
• Register types
• Formal vs. informal
• DOs & DON'Ts
• General information on dictionary use
• Online dictionary resources
• What is a corpus?
• Examples of the usefulness of a corpus
• Using the World Wide Web as a corpus
• Online corpus resources
• Different kinds of sources
• The functions of references
• Paraphrasing
• Summarising
• Reference accuracy
• Reference management tools
• Different kinds of reference styles
• Style format
• Elements of the reference list
• Documentary note style
• Writing acknowledgements
• What is academic integrity?
• Academic integrity and writing
• Academic integrity at LU
• Different kinds of plagiarism
• Avoiding plagiarism
• About Awelu

• Start here AWELU contents Student writing resources Research writing resources Administrative writing resources LU language policy
• Genres Introduction The Nature of Academic Writing Student writing genres Writing in Academic Genres Writing for Publication Writing for Administrative Purposes
• Writing The writing process Pre-writing stage Writing stage Rewriting stage
• Language Introduction Common problems and how to avoid them Selective mini grammar Coherence Punctuation Spelling Focus on vocabulary Register and style Dictionaries Corpora - resources for writer autonomy References
• Referencing Introduction Different kinds of sources The functions of references How to give references Reference accuracy Reference management tools Using a reference style Quick guides to reference styles Writing acknowledgements
• Academic integrity What is academic integrity? Academic integrity and writing Academic integrity at LU Plagiarism
• Repeating key nouns
• Using consistent pronouns
• Using transition signals to link ideas
• Arranging your ideas in logical order

A list of linking words for different purposes (Björk & Räisänen 1997)

Connecting events in a text (hamp lyons & heasley 2006).

Hamp Lyons & Heasley (2006, p. 80)

Paragraph Unity, Coherence, and Development

In each paragraph of an essay, one particular idea or topic is developed and explained. In order to successfully do so, however, it is essential that the paragraph be written in a unified and coherent manner. 

A unified paragraph must follow the idea mentioned in the topic sentence and must not deviate from it. For a further explanation on topic sentences, see the Write Right on Topic Sentences .

A coherent paragraph has sentences that all logically follow each other; they are not isolated thoughts. Coherence can be achieved in several ways. First, using transitions helps connect ideas from one sentence to the next. For more on transitions, see the Write Right on Transitions . Second, ordering thoughts in numerical sequence helps to direct the reader from one point to the next. Third, structuring each paragraph according to one of the following patterns helps to organize sentences: general to particular; particular to general; whole to parts; question to answer; or effect to cause. 

Remember that a paragraph should have enough sentences so that the main idea of the topic sentence is completely developed. Generalizations should be supported with examples or illustrations. Also, details and descriptions help the reader to understand what you mean. Don't ever assume that the reader can read your mind: be specific enough to develop your ideas thoroughly, but avoid repetition

An effective paragraph might look like this:

It is commonly recognized that dogs have an extreme antagonism toward cats. This enmity between these two species can be traced back to the time of the early Egyptian dynasties. Archaeologists in recent years have discovered Egyptian texts in which there are detailed accounts of canines brutally mauling felines. Today this type of cruelty between these two domestic pets can be witnessed in regions as close as your own neighborhood. For example, when dogs are walked by their masters (and they happen to catch sight of a stray cat), they will pull with all their strength on their leash until the master is forced to yield; the typical result is that a feline is chased up a tree. The hatred between dogs and cats has lasted for many centuries, so it is unlikely that this conflict will ever end.

This paragraph is effective for the following reasons:

• The paragraph shows unity. All the sentences effectively relate back to the topic sentence at the beginning of the paragraph. 
• The paragraph shows coherence. There is a flow of thoughts and ideas among the sentences in this paragraph. There are good transitions employed in the paragraph. The writer also presents her sub-topics in an orderly fashion that the reader can follow easily.
• The paragraph is developed. The writer gives herself enough space to develop the topic. She gives us at least two reasons to accept her argument and incorporates some examples in order to give those reasons more validity.

Reference: Strunk, Wiliam Jr., and E. B. White. The Elements of Style . 4th ed., Allyn and Bacon, 2000.

Copyright © 2009 Wheaton College Writing Center

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

11 Unity & Coherence

Preserving unity.

Academic essays need unity, which means that all of the ideas in an essay need to relate to the thesis, and all of the ideas in a paragraph need to relate to the paragraph’s topic. It can be easy to get “off track” and start writing about an idea that is somewhat related to your main idea, but does not directly connect to your main point.

All of the sentences in a paragraph should stay “on track;” that is, they should connect to the topic. One way to preserve unity in a paragraph is to start with a topic sentence that shows the main idea of the paragraph. Then, make sure each sentence in the paragraph relates to that main idea.

If you find a sentence that goes off track, perhaps you need to start a separate paragraph to write more about that different idea. Each paragraph should generally have only one main idea.

As you pre-write and draft an essay, try to pause occasionally. Go back to the assignment prompt and re-read it to make sure you are staying on topic. Use the prompt to guide your essay; make sure you are addressing all of the questions. Do not just re-state the words in the prompt. Instead, respond to the questions with your own ideas, in your own words, and make sure everything connects to the prompt and your thesis.

Activity A ~ Finding Breaks in Unity

Consider the following paragraphs. Is there a topic sentence? If so, do all of the other sentences relate to the topic sentence? Can you find any sentences that don’t relate?

     The planned community of Columbia, Maryland, was designed as a city open to all, regardless of race, level of income, or religion. When Columbia began in 1967, many cities in the U.S. did not allow people of certain races to rent or buy homes. Its developer, James W. Rouse, wanted to build a new city that had fair and open housing options for everyone. HCC has a building named for James W. Rouse. Today, the city’s nearly 100,000 remain diverse, as shown by recent census data. *****

    College can be expensive and difficult. Critical thinking is a very important skill for college students to develop so that they can be successful in their careers. Employers look for graduates who can understand information, analyze data, and solve problems. They also want employees who can think creatively and communicate their ideas clearly. College students need to practice these skills in all of their classes so that they can demonstrate their abilities to potential employers. ***** Bananas are one of Americans’ favorite types of fruit. The Cavendish variety, grown in Central and South America, is the most commonly sold here in the U.S. Recent problems with a fungus called Panama disease (or TR4), however, have led to a shortage of Cavendish bananas. Similar problems occurred a few years ago in parts of Asia and the Middle East. Because the fungus kills the crop and contaminates the soil, scientists are concerned that the popular Cavendish banana could be completely eradicated. Bananas contain many nutrients, including potassium and Vitamin B6. *****

Whether you choose to include a topic sentence or not, all of the sentences in your paragraph need to relate to the one main idea of the paragraph.

Another way to think about unity in a paragraph is to imagine your family tree. Draw a quick sketch of your family tree in your notebook. If you were writing an essay about your family, you might write a paragraph about close family members first. Next, you might branch out into another paragraph to write about more distant relatives. You might even include a paragraph about very close family friends, or pets. Each paragraph would have just one main idea (immediate family, more distant relatives, close family friends), and every sentence in each paragraph would relate to that main idea.

Activity B ~ Preserving Unity in Your Own Writing

Examine a composition that you have written for this class. Do all of your paragraphs have unity? Can you find any sentences that don’t relate to the topic of each paragraph? Exchange papers with a partner to peer review.

Ensuring Coherence

There are several ways to create connections between ideas in your essay. Here are some suggestions:

1. Repeat key words and phrases. This can be a powerful way to make a point. Consider this excerpt from Rev. Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, in which he uses parallel structure :

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

2. Use synonyms , as in this example, where King uses both repetition (“Let freedom ring”) and synonyms (for “mountains”):

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that: Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

3. Use pronouns to refer to antecedents , as King does here; this can be more elegant than just repeating the key words and phrases:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

4. Use demonstratives ( this, that, these, those ) as adjectives or pronouns, as King does here:

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”…. This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.  

Questions to Ponder

Pause for a moment here to think about the examples above. Think about audience, purpose, and context of an academic essay. Would you use the techniques for coherence in the same way that Dr. King did in his speech, or would you use the techniques in a different way? Discuss with a small group.

5. Use transitions. Transition words and phrases will help you to make sure your essay has coherence. Also called signal words/phrases or signposts, these help to guide your readers.

Transitions connect your related ideas; they can also show your reader that you are starting a new topic, giving an example, adding information, explaining causes and effects, and so on. Using the correct transition word or phrase in a sentence can make your writing much clearer. Try the activity below to think of possible transitions.

Activity C ~ Transition Words & Phrases

With your partner, brainstorm a list of transition words and phrases for each of the categories below.

Can you think of other transition words and phrases? What other categories do they belong to?

After you have completed these activities with your partner, consult  Transition Words & Phrases ~ Useful Lists for more on compare/contrast, addition, cause/effect, and other transitions to try.

Activity D ~ Ensuring Coherence in Your Own Writing

Examine a composition that you have written for this class for coherence. Find and mark examples of places where you used repetition, synonyms, pronouns or demonstratives to build connections between ideas.

Underline your transition words and phrases. Did you use the strongest signal words? Can you find examples where you need to add a transition? Or, did you use too many transitions? Exchange papers with a partner to peer review.

Consult our chapter on Transitions for more inspiration on achieving coherence and cohesion in your writing. Challenge yourself to use some new transitions in your next composition.

Is this chapter:

…about right, but you would like more examples? –> Read “ Cohesion and Coherence ” from George Mason University’s Writing Center.

…too easy, or you would like more examples? –> Read “ ESL: Coherence and Cohesion ” from the Writing & Communication Center at the University of Washington/Bothell

Note: links open in new tabs.

King, Martin Luther, Jr. “I Have a Dream.” March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. 28 August 1963. Washington, D.C. Speech.

to start to do something different

short piece or sample, for example a direct quote in writing or a few measures of a musical composition

to think about

ENGLISH 087: Academic Advanced Writing Copyright © 2020 by Nancy Hutchison is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

• Creating Coherence in Writing
• English Department

June 3, 2021

In this series, we’re discussing the way your essays will be evaluated in English 101, Southern’s first-year writing course. The five elements are unity, coherence, content, style, and correctness.

After seeing how to make your essay unified through the use of a good title, an organic first line, a specific thesis, and an interesting closing, let’s go to the next key element of writing, coherence.

Coherence is the quality of an essay that makes it easier to read. The technique can be described with many vivid analogies.

Essays should show natural structure, connectedness, flow, bridge-building, plot, thread, and harmony. Each of these expressions mean the same thing. As they read your essay, readers should have a strong sense of anticipation and sequence. They should be drawn forward toward your conclusion.

A coherent essay is a single unit with a beginning, middle, and end in the same way that an animal “unit” has a beginning, middle, and end. The cheetah has a particular sort of head, body, and tail which makes it perfect for what it does—chase down its prey. It all works together to that end.

Instead of being a disconnected collection of sentences and paragraphs, coherent essays contain sentences and paragraphs that work together for a common purpose. Without cohesion, readers are forced to make the connections between apparently disconnected ideas. Readers have to “write” the essay. You don’t want readers to do your work!

There are many techniques for creating coherence. Any element of an essay that points backward and draws forward will do the job. You can use synonyms, pronouns, paraphrase, and repetition to point forward and backward in an essay. An example of paraphrasing: “The Super Bowl lasted for six hours. This time broke a record.”

The music analogy is particularly potent. To make music, we have to arrange notes harmoniously. Random notes are not the kind of music we usually like. A note is beautiful only in context of other notes. An essay is a “tune,” perhaps even a symphony.

When you read professional writing, note how authors create coherence. There are two ways to learn the principle of coherence. Practice it consciously and identify it in the writing of others. You too can become a fine author.

• Home | English Matters
• The Power of Cause and Effect Thinking
• English Spelling
• From Whence Comes the Rose
• The Question of Human Suffering
• Annika's Story
• How To Read the Bible Out Loud
• Active vs. Passive Meaning
• Critical Thinking | A Christian Art
• To. get. her.
• MFT Prep - Question Style
• "Frigate" by Christina Cannon
• A Literary Sentence
• Which Half?
• Existentialism and Literature
• Writers and Their Sources
• Welcome Back!
• My Hopes and Dreams
• Review: Writing in a Group
• New Student Orientation
• Book Review | Homage to Catalonia
• Two Kinds of Writing
• The Tropes and the Figures
• Word Choice | What Churchill Meant
• Interviews | Erick Flores
• Faculty News | Linda Tym
• Alumni News
• Critical Thinking | The Influence of Bad Ideas
• Only Two Kinds of Reasoning
• The Virtues of Nouns and Verbs
• Jack London's Periodic Sentences
• When Even the Best Writing Fails to Persuade
• Creating Correctness in Writing
• Creating Style in Writing
• Creating Content in Writing
• Recruiting at Collegedale Academy
• Creating Unity in Writing
• What Phaedrus Learned about Composition
• Classical Invention
• Interviews | Madison Wilcox
• JobWorld | Students Feel Unprepared for World of Work
• Good Advice about Writing
• Sentence Length and Focus
• JobWorld | Content Marketing
• Literary Theory | New Criticism
• Biblical Literature | The Supernarrative
• Program Notes | ENGL 460 Senior English Project
• That's Good Advice! | The 80% Rule
• Tropes and Figures | Paraprosdokians
• Grammar | Identifying Parts of Speech the Easy Way
• GRE Prep | Sample Question
• Interviews | Erik Lorenz
• Tropes and Figures | Congeries
• Senior Awards
• Short and Sweet | Will Rogers
• Biblical Literature | The Real Problem of Pain
• Education News | Taiwan Pushes English
• The GRE in Literature
• Stylistics | Collocations
• From Boomer to Zoomer
• Author Profile | Gertrude Stein

Visit Us: Collegedale, Tennessee

See For Yourself

Follow along.

• Change Your Password
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Consumer Information
• © Copyright All Rights Reserved

• I nfographics
• Show AWL words
• Subscribe to newsletter
• What is academic writing?
• Academic Style
• What is the writing process?
• Understanding the title
• Brainstorming
• Researching
• First draft
• Proofreading
• Report writing
• Compare & contrast
• Cause & effect
• Problem-solution
• Classification
• Essay structure
• Introduction
• Literature review
• Book review
• Research proposal
• Thesis/dissertation

What is cohesion?

• Cohesion vs coherence

Transition signals

• What are references?
• In-text citations
• Reference sections
• Reporting verbs
• Band descriptors

Show AWL words on this page.

Levels 1-5:     grey  Levels 6-10:   orange 

Show sorted lists of these words.

Any words you don't know? Look them up in the website's built-in dictionary .

Choose a dictionary .  Wordnet  OPTED  both

Cohesion How to make texts stick together

Cohesion and coherence are important features of academic writing. They are one of the features tested in exams of academic English, including the IELTS test and the TOEFL test . This page gives information on what cohesion is and how to achieve good cohesion. It also explains the difference between cohesion and coherence , and how to achieve good coherence. There is also an example essay to highlight the main features of cohesion mentioned in this section, as well as some exercises to help you practise.

For another look at the same content, check out YouTube or Youku , or the infographic .

It is important for the parts of a written text to be connected together. Another word for this is cohesion . This word comes from the verb cohere , which means 'to stick together'. Cohesion is therefore related to ensuring that the words and sentences you use stick together.

Good cohesion is achieved through the following five main methods, each of which is described in more detail below:

• repeated words/ideas
• reference words
• transition signals
• substitution

Two other ways in which cohesion is achieved in a text, which are covered less frequently in academic English courses, are shell nouns and thematic development . These are also considered below.

Repeated words/ideas

Check out the cohesion infographic »

One way to achieve cohesion is to repeat words, or to repeat ideas using different words (synonyms). Study the following example. Repeated words (or synonyms) are shown in bold.

Cohesion is an important feature of academic writing . It can help ensure that your writing coheres or 'sticks together', which will make it easier for the reader to follow the main ideas in your essay or report . You can achieve good cohesion by paying attention to five important features . The first of these is repeated words. The second key feature is reference words. The third one is transition signals. The fourth is substitution. The final important aspect is ellipsis.

In this example, the word cohesion is used several times, including as a verb ( coheres ). It is important, in academic writing, to avoid too much repetition, so using different word forms or synonyms is common. The word writing is also used several times, including the phrase essay or report , which is a synonym for writing . The words important features are also repeated, again using synonyms: key feature , important aspect .

Reference words

Reference words are words which are used to refer to something which is mentioned elsewhere in the text, usually in a preceding sentence. The most common type is pronouns, such as 'it' or 'this' or 'these'. Study the previous example again. This time, the reference words are shown in bold.

Cohesion is an important feature of academic writing. It can help ensure that your writing coheres or 'sticks together', which will make it easier for the reader to follow the main ideas in your essay or report. You can achieve good cohesion by paying attention to five important features. The first of these is repeated words. The second key feature is reference words. The third one is transition signals. The fourth is substitution. The final important aspect is ellipsis.

The words it , which and these are reference words. The first two of these, it and which , both refer to 'cohesion' used in the preceding sentence. The final example, these , refers to 'important features', again used in the sentence that precedes it.

Transition signals, also called cohesive devices or linking words, are words or phrases which show the relationship between ideas. There are many different types, the most common of which are explained in the next section on transition signals . Some examples of transition signals are:

• for example - used to give examples
• in contrast - used to show a contrasting or opposite idea
• first - used to show the first item in a list
• as a result - used to show a result or effect

Study the previous example again. This time, the transition signals are shown in bold. Here the transition signals simply give a list, relating to the five important features: first , second , third , fourth , and final .

Substitution

Substitution means using one or more words to replace (substitute) for one or more words used earlier in the text. Grammatically, it is similar to reference words, the main difference being that substitution is usually limited to the clause which follows the word(s) being substituted, whereas reference words can refer to something far back in the text. The most common words used for substitution are one , so , and auxiliary verbs such as do, have and be . The following is an example.

• Drinking alcohol before driving is illegal in many countries, since doing so can seriously impair one's ability to drive safely.

In this sentence, the phrase 'doing so' substitutes for the phrase 'drinking alcohol before driving' which appears at the beginning of the sentence.

Below is the example used throughout this section. There is just one example of substitution: the word one , which substitutes for the phrase 'important features'.

Ellipsis means leaving out one or more words, because the meaning is clear from the context. Ellipsis is sometimes called substitution by zero , since essentially one or more words are substituted with no word taking their place.

Below is the example passage again. There is one example of ellipsis: the phrase 'The fourth is', which means 'The fourth [important feature] is', so the words 'important feature' have been omitted.

Shell nouns

Shell nouns are abstract nouns which summarise the meaning of preceding or succeeding information. This summarising helps to generate cohesion. Shell nouns may also be called carrier nouns , signalling nouns , or anaphoric nouns . Examples are: approach, aspect, category, challenge, change, characteristics, class, difficulty, effect, event, fact, factor, feature, form, issue, manner, method, problem, process, purpose, reason, result, stage, subject, system, task, tendency, trend, and type . They are often used with pronouns 'this', 'these', 'that' or 'those', or with the definite article 'the'. For example:

• Virus transmission can be reduced via frequent washing of hands, use of face masks, and isolation of infected individuals. These methods , however, are not completely effective and transmission may still occur, especially among health workers who have close contact with infected individuals.
• An increasing number of overseas students are attending university in the UK. This trend has led to increased support networks for overseas students.

In the example passage used throughout this section, the word features serves as a shell noun, summarising the information later in the passage.

Cohesion is an important feature of academic writing. It can help ensure that your writing coheres or 'sticks together', which will make it easier for the reader to follow the main ideas in your essay or report. You can achieve good cohesion by paying attention to five important features . The first of these is repeated words. The second key feature is reference words. The third one is transition signals. The fourth is substitution. The final important aspect is ellipsis.

Thematic development

Cohesion can also be achieved by thematic development. The term theme refers to the first element of a sentence or clause. The development of the theme in the rest of the sentence is called the rheme . It is common for the rheme of one sentence to form the theme of the next sentence; this type of organisation is often referred to as given-to-new structure, and helps to make writing cohere.

Consider the following short passage, which is an extension of the first example above.

• Virus transmission can be reduced via frequent washing of hands, use of face masks, and isolation of infected individuals. These methods, however, are not completely effective and transmission may still occur, especially among health workers who have close contact with infected individuals. It is important for such health workers to pay particular attention to transmission methods and undergo regular screening.

Here we have the following pattern:

• Virus transmission [ theme ]
• can be reduced via frequent washing of hands, use of face masks, and isolation of infected individuals [ rheme ]
• These methods [ theme = rheme of preceding sentence ]
• are not completely effective and transmission may still occur, especially among health workers who have close contact with infected individuals [ rheme ]
• health workers [ theme, contained in rheme of preceding sentence ]
• [need to] to pay particular attention to transmission methods and undergo regular screening [ rheme ]

Cohesion vs. coherence

The words 'cohesion' and 'coherence' are often used together with a similar meaning, which relates to how a text joins together to make a unified whole. Although they are similar, they are not the same. Cohesion relates to the micro level of the text, i.e. the words and sentences and how they join together. Coherence , in contrast, relates to the organisation and connection of ideas and whether they can be understood by the reader, and as such is concerned with the macro level features of a text, such as topic sentences , thesis statement , the summary in the concluding paragraph (dealt with in the essay structure section), and other 'bigger' features including headings such as those used in reports .

Coherence can be improved by using an outline before writing (or a reverse outline , which is an outline written after the writing is finished), to check that the ideas are logical and well organised. Asking a peer to check the writing to see if it makes sense, i.e. peer feedback , is another way to help improve coherence in your writing.

Example essay

Below is an example essay. It is the one used in the persuasion essay section. Click on the different areas (in the shaded boxes to the right) to highlight the different cohesive aspects in this essay, i.e. repeated words/ideas, reference words, transition signals, substitution and ellipsis.

Title: Consider whether human activity has made the world a better place.

History shows that human beings have come a long way from where they started. They have developed new technologies which means that everybody can enjoy luxuries they never previously imagined. However , the technologies that are temporarily making this world a better place to live could well prove to be an ultimate disaster due to , among other things, the creation of nuclear weapons , increasing pollution , and loss of animal species . The biggest threat to the earth caused by modern human activity comes from the creation of nuclear weapons . Although it cannot be denied that countries have to defend themselves, the kind of weapons that some of them currently possess are far in excess of what is needed for defence . If these [nuclear] weapons were used, they could lead to the destruction of the entire planet . Another harm caused by human activity to this earth is pollution . People have become reliant on modern technology, which can have adverse effects on the environment . For example , reliance on cars causes air and noise pollution . Even seemingly innocent devices, such as computers and mobile phones, use electricity, most of which is produced from coal-burning power stations, which further adds to environmental pollution . If we do not curb our direct and indirect use of fossil fuels, the harm to the environment may be catastrophic. Animals are an important feature of this earth and the past decades have witnessed the extinction of a considerable number of animal species . This is the consequence of human encroachment on wildlife habitats, for example deforestation to expand cities. Some may argue that such loss of [animal]   species is natural and has occurred throughout earth's history. However , the current rate of [animal]   species loss far exceeds normal levels   [of animal species loss] , and is threatening to become a mass extinction event. In summary , there is no doubt that current human activities such as the creation of nuclear weapons , pollution , and destruction of wildlife , are harmful to the earth . It is important for us to see not only the short-term effects of our actions, but their long-term ones as well. Otherwise , human activities will be just another step towards destruction .

Aktas, R.N. and Cortes, V. (2008), 'Shell nouns as cohesive devices in published and ESL student writing', Journal of English for Academic Purposes , 7 (2008) 3-14.

Alexander, O., Argent, S. and Spencer, J. (2008) EAP Essentials: A teacher's guide to principles and practice . Reading: Garnet Publishing Ltd.

Gray, B. (2010) 'On the use of demonstrative pronouns and determiners as cohesive devices: A focus on sentence-initial this/these in academic prose', Journal of English for Academic Purposes , 9 (2010) 167-183.

Halliday, M. A. K., and Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English . London: Longman.

Hinkel, E. (2004). Teaching Academic ESL Writing: Practical Techniques in Vocabulary and Grammar . Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc Publishers.

Hyland, K. (2006) English for Academic Purposes: An advanced resource book . Abingdon: Routledge.

Thornbury, S. (2005) Beyond the Sentence: Introducing discourse analysis . Oxford: Macmillan Education.

GET FREE EBOOK

Like the website? Try the books. Enter your email to receive a free sample from Academic Writing Genres .

Below is a checklist for essay cohesion and coherence. Use it to check your own writing, or get a peer (another student) to help you.

Next section

Find out more about transition signals in the next section.

• Transitions

Previous section

Go back to the previous section about paraphrasing .

• Paraphrasing

Exercises & Activities Some ways to practise this area of EAP

You need to login to view the exercises. If you do not already have an account, you can register for free.

• Register        
• Forgot password        
• Resend activiation email

Author: Sheldon Smith    ‖    Last modified: 03 February 2022.

Sheldon Smith is the founder and editor of EAPFoundation.com. He has been teaching English for Academic Purposes since 2004. Find out more about him in the about section and connect with him on Twitter , Facebook and LinkedIn .

Compare & contrast essays examine the similarities of two or more objects, and the differences.

Cause & effect essays consider the reasons (or causes) for something, then discuss the results (or effects).

Discussion essays require you to examine both sides of a situation and to conclude by saying which side you favour.

Problem-solution essays are a sub-type of SPSE essays (Situation, Problem, Solution, Evaluation).

Transition signals are useful in achieving good cohesion and coherence in your writing.

Reporting verbs are used to link your in-text citations to the information cited.

How to Maintain Coherence in Writing: Expert Tips

Coherence is the logical organization of ideas in a writing, ensuring that the writing flows smoothly and is easy for readers to follow. As an English teacher with years of experience, I’ve seen many students struggle with maintaining coherence in their writing. Therefore, in this post, I’ll share my expert tips on maintaining coherence in writing, with clear examples and explanations.

To maintain coherence in writing, you must organize your ideas logically and consistently and use different cohesive devices. These devices connect different parts of your writing and create a sense of continuity, helping to establish the logical flow of your writing.

You may try Fifty Ways to Practice Writing: Tips for ESL/EFL Students to practice and improve writing with pen and paper and typing. By applying these methods, you will write more, write faster, and write more correct and more interesting papers and letters.

Now, let’s see how you can ensure coherence in your writing. The following tips apply to any writing. However, before I share the tips, let’s learn the importance of coherence.

Table of Contents

Understand the importance of coherence, use clear and concise topic sentences, organize your ideas logically, #2 conjunctions, 1) addition transitions, 2) contrast transitions, 3) time transitions, 4) cause and effect transitions, #4 repetition, #5 references, use parallel structure, in conclusion.

Understanding the importance of coherence is crucial for effective communication in writing. Incoherent writing can cause confusion and frustration as well as it may discredit the writer’s message. Well! Now, let’s see the importance of coherence.

• Coherence ensures the clarity and understandability of your writing. Logical and sequential ideas help readers follow your argument, understand the main points, and draw their own conclusions.
• Coherence can also help you to make your writing more persuasive. If ideas are presented logically and connected, readers are more likely to be convinced by your argument.
• Coherence can enhance your credibility as a writer too. Coherent writing shows that you’ve carefully considered the topic, organized your ideas, and effectively communicated your message.
• Coherence can help you to engage readers to its best. By coherent writing, they stay engaged and interested in the topic.

Now let me share some tips you should follow to ensure coherence in your writing. I believe these tips can best help you to master your English writing skills .

Clear and concise topic sentences are essential for coherence in writing as they provide a roadmap for readers. They state the paragraph’s focus, help readers understand it easily, and anticipate the writer’s points. Well-written topic sentences also can establish the logical flow of writing, while unclear or ambiguous ones can confuse the reader and disrupt the main ideas.

In addition to maintaining coherence, clear and concise topic sentences can also help to improve the overall quality of the writing. For example, when you have a clear idea of the main point you want to make in each paragraph, you can better develop your ideas and provide evidence to support your arguments.

Logically organizing your ideas makes sense to the reader. To maintain coherence in your writing, consider organizing your thoughts chronologically, by importance, or by a specific pattern.

Suppose you’re writing a descriptive essay about your favorite place . In this case, maintaining coherence would involve arranging your description logically and sequentially. For instance, you might start by describing the place’s location, then move on to its physical features, such as the landscape, buildings, or landmarks.

From there, you could go on to describe the atmosphere and any activities or experiences you associate with the place. By coherently organizing your description, your reader can visualize the place and feel its emotions.

Use Different Cohesive Devices

Cohesive devices are words or phrases that connect different parts of a piece of writing together and create a sense of coherence. Let’s see some common types of cohesive devices.

Pronouns are one of the most common types of cohesive devices used in writing. They refer back to a previously mentioned noun, helping to connect ideas and establish a sense of continuity in writing. Replacing the noun with a pronoun can avoid repeating the same word multiple times and make the writing more concise and readable.

For example, instead of writing,

“John went to the store. John bought some apples,”

the writer can use a pronoun to create a more cohesive sentence:

“John went to the store and bought some apples.”

The pronoun “he” refers to the previously mentioned noun “John,” connecting the two ideas and creating a smoother flow of writing.

Conjunctions are words that connect different parts of a sentence or multiple sentences. They help show the relationship between ideas and create a cohesive flow in writing. For instance, the conjunction “and” is used to add ideas to a sentence, while “but” is used to show a contrast. Similarly, “however” is a conjunction used to signal a transition between two ideas.

Proper use of conjunctions is crucial in maintaining the coherence and clarity of a piece of writing. They help structure ideas logically, making it easier for readers to follow along and understand the message. However, you should not overuse conjunctions, as this can lead to a repetitive or confusing flow of ideas.

Let’s see an example.

 “John is smart, and he is also funny.”

Using the conjunction “and” here connects the two ideas and shows that John possesses both qualities. This creates a more cohesive and complete picture of John as a person.

#3 Transitions

Transitions are words or phrases connecting different parts of a sentence or multiple sentences. They help to establish a logical flow of writing by signaling to the reader how ideas are related and how they fit together. Several types of transitions include addition, contrast, time, and cause and effect.

Addition transitions, such as “in addition,” “moreover,” and “furthermore,” are used to connect ideas that add to or continue a previous point. These transitions signal to the reader that the writer is building upon a previous idea and help the reader follow the train of thought.

Contrast transitions, such as “however,” “nevertheless,” and “on the other hand,” are used to signal a contrast or a change in direction. They help create a clear separation between ideas and show their differences or differences.

Time transitions, such as “meanwhile,” “afterward,” and “previously,” are used to show the passage of time and connect ideas chronologically. These transitions help the reader understand the sequence of events or presented ideas.

Cause and effect transitions, such as “therefore,” “consequently,” and “as a result,” are used to show the relationship between ideas and how they lead to a particular outcome. They help to establish a clear cause-and-effect relationship between different ideas or events.

Repetition is a writing technique that involves repeating a word, phrase, or sentence structure to reinforce an idea or create a particular effect. By repeating certain words or phrases, writers can emphasize key points, establish a rhythm, and make their writing more memorable for readers.

For instance, consider the famous opening line of Charles Dickens’s novel, “A Tale of Two Cities”: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” The repetition of the phrase “it was the” creates a sense of symmetry and balance while highlighting the contrasting nature of the times that Dickens describes.

While repetition can be a powerful tool in writing, it’s essential to use it carefully. Overusing repetition can make writing appear tedious and repetitive. Effective writing balances repetition with other cohesive devices, such as transitions and variations in sentence structure, to create a varied and engaging flow.

References connect ideas by referring back to an earlier part of writing, such as a sentence or paragraph. By using connections effectively, you can create a clear and logical structure for your writing, making it easier for readers to follow along and understand their arguments or ideas. This is especially important in longer pieces of writing, such as essays, research papers, or even books, where there may be much information to convey.

For instance, in a paragraph about the benefits of coffee, a writer might say, “As previously mentioned, coffee can help improve focus and mental clarity.” Likewise, by using references, writers can maintain coherence and help readers follow the flow of ideas.

So, by using these cohesive devices effectively, you can create clear, organized, and effective writing that engages and informs the reader.

Parallelism is a writing technique that involves using the same grammatical structure for similar ideas. This creates consistency and clarity in writing, making it easier for readers to understand the relationships between different ideas.

For example, consider this sentence:

“I like hiking, swimming, and biking.”

The parallel structure of this sentence means that each activity is presented in the same grammatical format, using the same verb form and tense. This creates a clear and consistent pattern, making it easier for the reader to understand the list of activities.

Parallelism can be used in many different ways in writing. For instance, it can be used to create lists of items, as in the example above. It can also be used to develop a sense of balance and symmetry in a sentence, as in the famous quote from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Maintaining coherence in writing is essential for creating effective and engaging written work. Using the above-mentioned cohesive devices, you can connect ideas to maintain coherence throughout your writing.

Whether you are writing a short story, a research paper, or a business report, it is important to use these techniques appropriately and consistently to ensure that your writing is clear, effective, and easy to understand. By following these expert tips for maintaining coherence in writing, I believe you can produce engaging, persuasive, and impactful writing.

Thanks for reading.

Happy learning.

Related Posts

How to write a complaint letter: with comprehensive examples, a guide to the proper business letter format with examples, how to use a semicolon in a sentence: a complete guide, how to write a personal letter in english: the ideal format, niaj a a khan.

Niaj A A Khan is an ESL Instructor with over 8 years of experience in teaching & developing resources at different universities and institutes. Mr. Khan is also a passionate writer working on his first book, "Learn English at Ease."

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

📖 Join our community - for free! 📖

• Staff Directory
• Library Policies
• Hege Research Award
• Quaker Archives
• Art Gallery
• Student Support
• Teaching & Learning
• Reserving spaces
• Technology Lending
• Interlibrary Loan
• Course Reserves
• Copyright & Fair Use
• Poster Printing
• Virtual Reference
• Research Guides
• Off-campus access
• Digital Scholarship
• Guilford Sources
• Open Educational Resources
• Quaker Collections
• Digital Collections
• College Archives
• Underground Railroad
• Universities Studying Slavery
• Images & Exhibitions

Service Alert

Hege Library & Learning Technologies

• Guilford College
• Campus Partners

Guilford College Writing Manual

Revising to improve coherence.

• Practical Considerations
• Write to Learn
• Defining and Freeing the Self
• Joining a Community of Seekers
• Final Thoughts
• A Proposed Categorization of the Academic Writer's Responsibilities
• Required Writing Courses
• Placement in First-Year Writing Courses
• Writing Courses Beyond First-Year English
• Informal vs. Formal Writing
• Essay vs. Article
• Two Models of Papers
• What is the Real Difference?
• Specific Expectations of Papers
• Grade Descriptions
• The A Paper
• The B Paper
• The C Paper
• The D Paper
• The F Paper
• What makes college reading different?
• Levels of Reading
• An Overview
• Sample Schedule
• Suggestions for Prewriting
• Modes of Invention
• Four Categories of Invention
• Intuition Heuristics
• The Five Perspectives
• Loosening Heuristics
• Closing Observations
• Introduction
• Preliminary Tasks
• The Search Strategy
• Finding Materials
• Finding Appropriate Websites
• Selected Websites
• Documenting Your Sources
• Open Form vs. Fixed Form
• Geography of a Thesis and Proof Essay
• Introductions
• Body Paragraphs
• Conclusions
• Maintaining Control
• Geography of an Issues and Exploration Paper
• Reader Expectations
• What is Style?
• Festival of Verbs
• Two Zones of the Word Stock
• Levels of Generality
• Writing with Nouns and Verbs
• Avoiding Cliches
• The Two Faces of Jargon
• Using "I" in Academic Writing
• What Kinds of Sentences to Use
• Hemingway vs. Faulkner
• Three Syntactic Devices Worth Using
• Subject-Verb-Object
• Touches of Elegance
• Gunning's Fog Index
• Why It's Important
• Two General Principles
• Some College-Level Problems
• A Word on Typos
• An Important General Rap
• Revising Checklist
• Revising for Concreteness
• Revising to Eliminate Wordiness
• Revising to Sharpen
• Revising to Make More Effective Use of Quotations
• Revising to Make Language More Inclusive
• Revising to Brighten
• What It Is and Why We Do It
• Sample Edit Guide

REVISING TO IMPROVE COHERENCE

            Coherence describes the way that the elements in our sentences and para­graphs hang together to produce meaning. Usually when we write rough drafts, we are concerned mainly with getting our thoughts on paper, not with making sure that they interconnect well so that a reader can process our reasoning easily. We may even leave logical steps out.

            Revising for coherence means going back to the draft with the reader's needs in mind. It may mean inserting transitional words and phrases, or creating parallelism so that the reader can see at a glance that a pair of elements carry the same weight, or rearranging material within a sentence so that the reader gets an accurate sense of what’s important and what’s not. Generally, it means instructing the reader on how to read our discourse.

            The goal? Sharp focus.

            It may be profitable to think of focus in terms of its original meaning. Borrowed without change from Latin, this word surprisingly first meant "hearth" or "fireplace" (compare fellow derivatives FOYER and FUEL)—in other words, that central point from which heat and light radiate throughout a structure.  Focus entered the language of optical science with the sense of a place where things converge, and it is this sense of convergence and centrality and the sharp image that a correctly focused lens produces that we intend when we speak of FOCUS in writing.

Original paragraph :

            Vegetation covers the earth, except for those areas continuously covered with ice or utterly scorched by continual heat. Richly fertilized plains and river valleys are places where plants grow, as well as at the edge of perpetual snow in high mountains. There is plant growth not only in and around lakes and swamps but under the ocean and next to it. The cracks of busy city sidewalks have plants in them as well as in barren rocks. Before man existed the earth was covered with vegetation, and the earth will have vegetation long after evolutionary history swallows us up.

                                                                                    (from Joseph Williams, Style )

            The sentences contain sufficient information, but when read together they seem hazy, disconnected. It's not clear‑‑really‑‑what the main point is, even though one can sense the underlying logic. Note how the revising choices in the following version alleviate the problem.  Then we'll look at the specific changes that were made.

Revised paragraph :

Except in those areas continually covered with ice or scorched by  continual heat, the earth is covered with vegetation.  Plants grow not only in richly fertilized plains and river valleys but at the edge of perpetual snow in high mountains, not only in and around lakes and swamps but under the ocean and next to it.  They survive in the cracks of busy city sidewalks as well as in barren rocks.  Vegetation covered the earth before we existed and will cover the earth after evolution swallows us up.

            This version is much more reader‑friendly because the writer has made the following changes:

            (1)  Shifted the material in the first sentence so that the main point comes at the end of the sentence. Readers expect the most important informa­tion to come at the end. By putting it there, the writer has insured that the reader will not interpret the exception ("except for . . .") to be what this paragraph is about.  Instead, the reader can confidently go to the next sentence looking for examples of "the earth is covered with vegetation."

            (2)  Taken the six examples which make up the meat of the paragraph and put them in grammatically parallel constructions so the reader can see at a glance that they are all being used in the same way‑‑as examples.  Note how in the revi­sion, the grammatical subject is "plants" throughout the middle sentences, whereas in the previous version the subjects are "plains and river valleys," "plants," "plant growth," "the cracks of busy city sidewalks."  The subject‑shifts in the original are abrupt and confusing.

            (3) Strengthened the continuity from second last sentence to final sentence by beginning with "vegetation."  "Vegetation" connects immediately with the previous sentences, whereas in the original version, the opening clause suddenly shifts us into a historical perspective in which the first grammatical subject is "man."  Note also how the writer has sharpened the paragraph's focus‑-and hence the coherence‑‑by eliminating wordiness and strengthening the verbs.

Using transitions

             Another sure‑fire way of improving coherence is to use transitional words and phrases. Such devices function like road signs. They signal immediately the logical relationship between parts of a sentence, or, if positioned near the beginning of a sentence, the relationship between that sentence and the sentence that preceded it. Any two consecutive sentences have an implicit logical relationship; often it helps the reader if you make the relationship explicit. In looking at the following list of transitions drawn from the Harbrace College Handbook , note the logical relationships indicated by the category headings:

            1.  Alternative and addition : or, nor, and, and then, moreover, further, furthermore, besides, likewise, also, too, again, in addition, even more important, next, first, second, third, in the first place, in the second place, finally, last.

            2.  Comparison : similarly, likewise, in like manner.

            3.  Contrast : but, yet, or, and yet, however, still, nevertheless, on the other hand, on the contrary, conversely, even so, notwithstanding, for  all that, in contrast, at the same time, although this may be true, otherwise, nonetheless.

            4.  Place : here, beyond, nearby, opposite to, adjacent to, on the opposite side.

            5.  Purpose : to this end, for this purpose, with this object.         

            6.  Cause, result : so, for, hence, therefore, accordingly, consequently, thus, thereupon, as a result, then, because.

            7.  Summary, repetition, exemplification, intensification : to sum up, in brief, on the whole, in sum, in short, as I have said, in other words, that is, to be sure, as has been noted, for example, for instance, in fact, indeed, to tell the truth, in any event.

            8.  Time : meanwhile, at length, soon, after a few days, in the mean­time, afterward, later, now, then, in the past, while.

            See the improvement in coherence that results when transitions are added to the following paragraph:

            Cable television sounds like a good deal at first. All available local channels can be piped into a television set for a relatively low cost per month. The reception is clear‑‑a real bonus in fringe and rural areas.  Several channels for news and local access are in the basic monthly fee.  A cable connection to a second or third TV set costs extra. In most places subscribers have to pay as much as thirty dollars a month extra to get the channels like Home Box Office and The Disney Channel.  The movies change each month. The pay‑TV movie channels run the same films over and over during a month's time.  Many of the films offered each month are box office flops or reruns of old movies that can be viewed on regular channels.  Cable television isn't really a bargain.

                                                                        from Harbrace College Handbook

            Cable television sounds like a good deal at first. All available local channels can be piped into a television set for a relatively low cost per month. And the reception is clear‑‑a real bonus in fringe and rural areas. Moreover , several channels for news and local access are in the basic monthly fee. On the other hand , a cable connection to a second or third TV set costs extra. And in most places subscribers have to pay as much as thirty dollars a month extra to get the channels like Home Box Office and The Disney Channel. While it is true that the movies change each month, the pay‑TV channels run the same films over and over during a month's time, and many of the films offered each month are box office flops or reruns of old movies that can be viewed on regular channels.  In sum , cable television isn't really a bargain.

A final comment about transitional words and phrases : don’t overuse them. As historian Richard Marius observes, “when we use them too frequently to hold an essay together, they leave the rivets in our writing showing."

• << Previous: Revising to Sharpen
• Next: Revising to Make More Effective Use of Quotations >>
• Last Updated: Dec 8, 2015 1:59 AM
• URL: https://library.guilford.edu/writingmanual

Improving the Generalization Ability in Essay Coherence Evaluation Through Monotonic Constraints

• Conference paper
• First Online: 08 October 2023
• Cite this conference paper

• Chen Zheng 11 , 12 ,
• Huan Zhang 11 ,
• Yan Zhao 11 &
• Yuxuan Lai 11 , 12  

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 14304))

Included in the following conference series:

• CCF International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Chinese Computing

498 Accesses

Coherence is a crucial aspect of evaluating text readability and can be assessed through two primary factors when evaluating an essay in a scoring scenario. The first factor is logical coherence, characterized by the appropriate use of discourse connectives and the establishment of logical relationships between sentences. The second factor is the appropriateness of punctuation, as inappropriate punctuation can lead to confused sentence structure. To address these concerns, we propose a coherence scoring model consisting of a regression model with two feature extractors: a local coherence discriminative model and a punctuation correction model. We employ gradient-boosting regression trees as the regression model and impose monotonicity constraints on the input features. The results show that our proposed model better generalizes unseen data. The model achieved third place in track 1 of NLPCC 2023 shared task 7. Additionally, we briefly introduce our solution for the remaining tracks, which achieves second place for track 2 and first place for both track 3 and track 4.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Compact, lightweight edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Jurafsky, D., Martin, J. H.: Speech and Language Processing, 3rd edn. (Draft of Jan 7, 2023) (2023)

Google Scholar  

Huang, L., Ye, Z., Qin, J., Lin, L., Liang, X.: GRADE: automatic graph-enhanced coherence metric for evaluating open-domain dialogue systems. In Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP), pp. 9230–9240 (2020)

Christensen, J., Soderland, S., Etzioni, O.: Towards coherent multi-document summarization. In Proceedings of the 2013 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies, pp. 1163–1173 (2013)

Miltsakaki, E., Kukich, K.: Evaluation of text coherence for electronic essay scoring systems. Nat. Lang. Eng. 10 (1), 25–55 (2004)

Article   Google Scholar  

Burstein, J., Tetreault, J., Andreyev, S.: Using entity-based features to model coherence in student essays. In: Human Language Technologies: The 2010 Annual Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pp. 681–684 (2010)

Cahill, A., Evanini, K.: Natural language processing for writing and speaking. In: Handbook of Automated Scoring, pp. 69–92. Chapman and Hall/CRC, Boca Raton (2020)

Xu, P., et al.: A cross-domain transferable neural coherence model. In: Proceedings of the 57th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pp. 678–687 (2019)

Zhang, H., et al.: PaddleSpeech: an easy-to-use all-in-one speech toolkit. In: Proceedings of the 2022 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies: System Demonstrations, pp. 114–123 (2022)

Halliday, M. A. K., Hasan, R.: Cohesion in English (No. 9). Routledge (1976)

Morris, J., Hirst, G.: Lexical cohesion computed by thesaural relations as an indicator of the structure of text. Comput. Linguist. 17 (1), 21–48 (1991)

Hearst, M.A.: Text Tiling: segmenting text into multi-paragraph subtopic passages. Comput. Linguist. 23 (1), 33–64 (1997)

Foltz, P.W., Kintsch, W., Landauer, T.K.: The measurement of textual coherence with latent semantic analysis. Discourse Process. 25 (2–3), 285–307 (1998)

Li, J., Li, R., Hovy, E.: Recursive deep models for discourse parsing. In: Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP), pp. 2061–2069 (2014)

Mesgar, M., Strube, M.: A neural local coherence model for text quality assessment. In: Proceedings of the 2018 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, pp. 4328–4339 (2018)

Zhang, M., Hao, S., Xu, Y., Ke, D., Peng, H.: Automated essay scoring using incremental latent semantic analysis. J. Softw. 9 (2), 429–436 (2014)

Fu, R., Wang, D., Wang, S., Hu, G., Liu, T.: Elegart sentence recognition for automated essay scoring. J. Chin. Inf. Process. 32 (6), 10 (2018)

Song, W., Song, Z., Liu, L., Fu, R.: Hierarchical multi-task learning for organization evaluation of argumentative student essays. In: IJCAI, pp. 3875–3881 (2020)

Song, W., Zhang, K., Fu, R., Liu, L., Liu, T., Cheng, M.: Multi-stage pre-training for automated Chinese essay scoring. In Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP), pp. 6723–6733 (2020)

He, Y., Jiang, F., Chu, X., Li, P.: Automated Chinese essay scoring from multiple traits. In: Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, pp. 3007–3016 (2022)

Cui, Y., Che, W., Liu, T., Qin, B., Wang, S., Hu, G.: Revisiting pre-trained models for Chinese natural language processing. Findings Assoc. Comput. Linguist.: EMNLP 2020 , 657–668 (2020)

Federico, M., Cettolo, M., Bentivogli, L., Michael, P., Sebastian, S.: Overview of the IWSLT 2012 evaluation campaign. In: Proceedings of the International Workshop on Spoken Language Translation (IWSLT), pp. 12–33 (2012)

Iter, D., Guu, K., Lansing, L., Jurafsky, D.: Pretraining with contrastive sentence objectives improves discourse performance of language models. In: Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pp. 4859–4870 (2020)

Long, W., Webber, B., Xiong, D.: TED-CDB: a large-scale Chinese discourse relation dataset on ted talks. In: Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP), pp. 2793–2803 (2020)

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by NSFC (62206070), the Innovation Fund Project of the Engineering Research Center of Integration and Application of Digital Learning Technology, Ministry of Education (1221014, 1221052), and National Key R &D Program of China (2021YFF0901005).

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

The Open University of China, Beijing, China

Chen Zheng, Huan Zhang, Yan Zhao & Yuxuan Lai

Engineering Research Center of Integration and Application of Digital Learning Technology, Ministry of Education, Beijing, China

Chen Zheng & Yuxuan Lai

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chen Zheng .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

Microsoft Research Asia, Beijing, China

Soochow University, Suzhou, China

Qingting Xu

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Cite this paper.

Zheng, C., Zhang, H., Zhao, Y., Lai, Y. (2023). Improving the Generalization Ability in Essay Coherence Evaluation Through Monotonic Constraints. In: Liu, F., Duan, N., Xu, Q., Hong, Y. (eds) Natural Language Processing and Chinese Computing. NLPCC 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 14304. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44699-3_27

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44699-3_27

Published : 08 October 2023

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-031-44698-6

Online ISBN : 978-3-031-44699-3

eBook Packages : Computer Science Computer Science (R0)

Share this paper

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Societies and partnerships

• Find a journal
• Track your research

21 Coherence Examples

Coherence refers to the qualities of consistency, harmony, and logical connection within a set of ideas or elements.

To be coherence means to make seamless connections between ideas and use an understandable flow during communication.

The term can be applied to many concepts, including:

• The storyline in a novel
• A person’s debate speech
• A politician’s policy platform

The more coherent something is, the easier it is to logically follow and understand. The degree of coherence in an idea also often serves as an indicator of its efficiency or effectiveness.

In order to be coherent, you may need to plan-out how you will communicate an idea, write drafts, organize your thoughts, and pay attention to the logic and flow of your key points.

Coherence Examples

1. demonstrating cause and effect.

A story that is coherent will clearly explain the chain of events in the story. One way to do this is to demonstrate cause and effect.

To explain it another way, imagine if something happened in a story that seems odd, and there’s no explanation as to why or how it happened. You would be left feeling as if the story was incoherent .

So, clearly explaining cause and effect allows a reader to follow the chain of events or ideas logically, enhancing overall understanding and agreement with your points.

See Also: Cause and Effect Examples

2. Using Logical Reasoning

The use of logical reasoning is a powerful way to enhance coherence in your communication.

Logical reasoning is the act of drawing conclusions based on premises that are true, and it operates under the guiding principles of sound logic. This enhances your credibility and the value of your ideas.

Imagine, for example, if someone told a story and there were points within it that were illogical . This, in itself, will be an incoherent story!

See Also: The Types of Fallacy

3. Avoiding Fallacies and Heuristics

Resorting to fallacies and heuristics tends to tarnish a part of the coherence of your communication.

Fallacies are mistakes or errors in reasoning, while heuristics are mental shortcuts people take that can sometimes lead to faulty decision making.

For instance, allowing logical fallacies such as the strawman argument, where the argument’s viewpoint is misrepresented to weaken it, obstructs the coherence by distorting the logical reasoning.

Staying clear from such tendencies ensures that your position is firmly anchored in solid reasoning, thus increasing the coherence of your message.

See Also: The Multiple Types of Fallacy

4. Staying on Topic

Veering off the topic is perhaps the most common way that my students fail to maintain coherence in their essays.

Imagine trying to understand a text where the author jumps randomly from topic to topic with no clear connection. This would be hard to follow and would seem incoherent.

And yet, too often, students will start a paragraph talking about one concept and end it on a completely random tangent. Avoid this, and you’ll be on track to greater coherence.

5. Using Clear Language

Sometimes, lack of clarity in word choice can make something incoherent. Take, for example, talking to a toddler. The toddler is trying to communicate something, and you have to strain very hard to understand their baby talk. Their incoherence is rooted in their inability to speak clearly.

Similarly, jargon or overly complex language can lead to confusion and misinterpretation, damaging the coherence of your message.

6. Organizing Ideas Logically

Sometimes, the most straightforward way of improving the coherence of student essays is to simply think a little harder while essay planning about what to say first, second, and third.

Consider, for example, why one idea would come before another. Oftentimes, we need to use basic ideas like defining terms before we move on to analyzing them. By simply paying attention to how you organize your points, you can make your work appear much more coherent.

7. Using Clear Transitions Between Ideas

Strong coherence can be achieved through effective use of transitions between ideas. Imagine you’re being told a story, and suddenly, without any warning, the topic changes. You’re left confused and it feels like the story is jumping around.

This happens without clear transitions.

But a well-placed transition clearly shows the link between the two ideas, meaning the reader can follow along easily.

You can use transitions for contrast, like “however”, “by contrast” and “on the other hand”. These simple transition words can help the reader or listener understand the relationship between the first and second ideas you’re presenting.

8. Using Relevant Examples

When you provide relevant examples in your writing, you increase the coherence of your message because examples help people to understand you better.

Picture trying to understand a complex idea, and the person teaching you tries to clarify it using an example that is relevant to you. This, often, is when you have that ‘lightbulb moment’ and finally understand the idea.

Providing examples directly tied to your main idea help elucidate your point, making the message clear and coherent for the audience.

9. Addressing and Debunking Counterarguments

Addressing and debunking counterarguments can underpin the logic of your own point of view, and therefore, improve the coherence of your arguments.

Consider presenting an idea without addressing the possible counterarguments that might arise against it. It can lead to a feeling of imbalance or a lack of full perspective.

However, by addressing those counterpoints openly, you demonstrate that you consider your position from multiple perspectives, lending your argument a sense of robustness, wholeness, and ultimately, coherence.

10. Using Consistent Tone and Style

Having a consistent tone and style is key to maintaining coherence in your text.

Visualize reading a serious political commentary article and, midway through, it starts using humor and colloquial language. It would feel disjointed, disrupting the reader’s understanding.

By maintaining a consistent tone and style throughout your text, you ensure a smooth, coherent experience for the reader, making your message more accessible and easier to understand.

My Full List of Ways to be Coherent

• Demonstrating Cause and Effect
• Using Logical Reasoning
• Avoiding Fallacies and Heuristics
• Staying on Topic
• Using Clear Language
• Organizing Ideas Logically
• Using Clear Transitions Between Ideas
• Using Relevant Examples
• Addressing and Debunking Counterarguments
• Using Consistent Tone and Style
• Remaining Consistent in your Worldview
• Structuring Sentences Clearly
• Using Analogies to Clarify Complex Ideas
• Clearly Linking Sub-Points to the Main Topic
• Using Consistent Terminology
• Using Signposting
• Providing Context for Ambiguous Statements
• Avoiding Overly Complex Sentence Structures
• Using Visual Aids (like charts or graphs) Appropriately
• Summarizing Points Periodically
• Avoiding Contradictions
• Proofreading for Clarity

Coherence vs Cohesion

Coherence and cohesion are both essential elements in effective writing. Coherence is about the higher-level ideas and arguments, while cohesion is about the syntax and grammar of the writing at the sentence level.

While the terms are interconnected and overlap, they are different concepts:

• Coherence refers to the logical and consistent interconnection of ideas in a piece of writing. This concept is about the ideas and the arguments that are being made connecting logically to create a clear, easy-to-follow narrative.
• Cohesion is about the grammatical and linguistic elements of writing that make it readable and understandable. It involves things like transitions, reference words, and sentence structure. It refers to the way you connect sentences and paragraphs to each other through various linguistic and grammatical devices.

A piece of writing can have one without the other. It is possible to have a text that is cohesive with excellent syntax, yet lacks coherence because the ideas aren’t logically connected. Similarly, a text’s ideas could theoretically be logically interconnected (coherent) while the syntax and grammar that connects the sentences are lacking (cohesive).

See More: Cohesion Examples

Coherence is the backbone of clear and effective communication. Its role in organizing ideas, synthesizing information, and facilitating understanding can’t be overemphasized. Lacking coherence can make even the most profound ideas seem jumbled and difficult to comprehend. Therefore, for students, we need to keep our focus on maintaining coherence in our communication style in order to achieve clarity, precision, and persuasive power. Through this, you’ll see your grades grow!

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 5 Top Tips for Succeeding at University
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 50 Durable Goods Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 100 Consumer Goods Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 30 Globalization Pros and Cons

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Help | Advanced Search

Computer Science > Computation and Language

Title: improving the generalization ability in essay coherence evaluation through monotonic constraints.

Abstract: Coherence is a crucial aspect of evaluating text readability and can be assessed through two primary factors when evaluating an essay in a scoring scenario. The first factor is logical coherence, characterized by the appropriate use of discourse connectives and the establishment of logical relationships between sentences. The second factor is the appropriateness of punctuation, as inappropriate punctuation can lead to confused sentence structure. To address these concerns, we propose a coherence scoring model consisting of a regression model with two feature extractors: a local coherence discriminative model and a punctuation correction model. We employ gradient-boosting regression trees as the regression model and impose monotonicity constraints on the input features. The results show that our proposed model better generalizes unseen data. The model achieved third place in track 1 of NLPCC 2023 shared task 7. Additionally, we briefly introduce our solution for the remaining tracks, which achieves second place for track 2 and first place for both track 3 and track 4.

Submission history

Access paper:.

• Other Formats

References & Citations

• Google Scholar
• Semantic Scholar

BibTeX formatted citation

Bibliographic and Citation Tools

Code, data and media associated with this article, recommenders and search tools.

• Institution

arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs .