By Dana P Skopal, PhD
We all claim we know how to write, but do we really understand how to write coherently? I have written many blog posts about this one word – coherence – and I cover it in my writing workshops. However, writing coherently involves several stages of planning and drafting as well as logical thinking.
Coherence covers both the ordering of key points as well as links between sentences. Many times a reader is towards the end of a document section and the writer then states: before doing this you need to do the following steps. Why is the writer telling the reader at the end that they need to do a specific action before doing all the points they have just read?
Think about coherence as logical connections between document sections, paragraphs and sentences. Aim to unjumble your information and order it coherently for the reader by:
- knowing the big picture that you are trying to convey
- knowing the key five or six stages and check they are in a suitably staged order (even using a mind map when drafting)
- checking you use consistent terms throughout
- linking your ideas with word markers such as first, second etc
- giving information in stages within a paragraph, with no new information at the beginning of a sentence
- having someone else read your text to see if it makes sense.
As a writer you need to revise your first drafts, as often the first version may well be a brain-dump of information. Or if we are writing about a system that we know, it is easy to not see the order of information from the perspective of a new user. From the above list of bullet points, the last one is important – a good check for any written document is to have someone with a fresh pair of eyes read the full text.
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