By Dana P Skopal, PhD
When running writing workshops and lecturing, one word generates many questions and is often difficult to explain in just one sentence. The word is ‘coherence’. If a written or spoken text is ‘coherent’, the argument or story-line makes sense to the message receiver.
However, this term ‘coherence’ is not easy to define in a way that writers suddenly understand and can easily apply. In broad terms, coherence covers a combination relating to the ordering of key points, the discourse links between sentences that guide the message receiver, as well as the sentence content.
As a writer, we can often learn more about coherence through understanding what our readers need, which in a way aligns with the first principle of plain English – write for your reader. From my research it was evident that understanding ‘how people read’ had lessons for the way we write. The focus is not only on what ‘words’ you may use in your sentences.
Coherence relates to the right combination of:
- macro-structure (logical order)
- document design (layout)
- micro-structure, or grammar and using appropriate terms.
These 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 points were covered in my blog on Beginning a sentence – check it out. To read more about how these three factors interlink, go to:
Public discourse syndrome: reformulating for clarity. Text & Talk, 37 (1), pp. 141–164, by Skopal, D. P. & Herke, M. (2017), doi: 10.1515/text-2016-0041.