By Dana P Skopal, PhD
When teaching and lecturing, one word seems to generate many questions – that word is ‘coherence’. If a text is coherent, the argument/ story makes sense to the reader. Yet this term ‘coherence’ is not easy to define in a way that writers suddenly see the light go on. In broad terms, coherence covers both the ordering of key points as well as discourse links between sentences.
I recently spoke about coherence in relation to writing board papers, but the principles apply to other business writing. Go to the webinar and listen.
As a writer, we can often learn more about coherence through understanding what our readers need. From my research it was clear that understanding ‘how people read’ has lessons for the way we write. Coherence relates to the right combination of:
- macro-structure (logical order)
- document design (layout)
- micro-structure, or grammar and using appropriate terms.
The three factors are inter-related. For example, the way a writer uses nouns in sentences (micro-structure) can impact on the overall logic (macro-structure), and hence coherence. Some of the key points were covered in my blog on Beginning a sentence – check it out.
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