Coherence. A paragraph has coherence—or flows—if all its details fit together in a way that readers can easily follow. The following methods can help you achieve paragraph coherence:
The same methods you use to create coherent paragraphs can be used to link paragraphs so that a whole piece of writing flows more smoothly. You can create links to previous paragraphs by repeating or paraphrasing key words and phrases and by using parallelism and transitions.
This sample paragraph from David Craig’s research project (49e), which identifies a topic and a comment on the topic and then offers detailed evidence in support of the point, achieves coherence with a general-to-specific organization, repetition of key content related to digital communication and teenagers, and transitions that relate this paragraph to the preceding one and relate sentences to one another.
Transition from preceding paragraph
Topic sentence
Supporting evidence
Sentence-to-sentence transition
student writing
Based on the preceding statistics, parents and educators appear to be right about the decline in youth literacy. And this trend coincides with another phenomenon: digital communication is rising among the young. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 85 percent of those aged 12–17 at least occasionally write text messages, instant messages, or comments on social networking sites (Lenhart, Arafeh, Smith, and Macgill). In 2001, the most conservative estimate based on Pew numbers showed that American youths spent, at a minimum, nearly three million hours per day on messaging services (Lenhart and Lewis 20). These numbers are now exploding thanks to texting, which was “the dominant daily mode of communication” for teens in 2012 (Lenhart), and messaging on popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Tumblr.
bedfordstmartins.com/wia
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