Maintaining consistency

Coherence in a draft can suffer from three kinds of shifts:

• in point of view: (for example, from I to you or from anyone to they)
• in verb tense (for example, from swam to swims)
• in questions and quotations (from direct to indirect or vice versa)

Point of view and verb tense in academic writing

Related topics:

Shifts

Shifts in point of view

Shifts in verb tense

Shifts from indirect to direct questions

Shifts from indirect to direct quotations

first-person point of view I or me (first person singular), we or us (first person plural); the perspective of the writer.

direct quotation An exact representation of what someone spoke or wrote; it is enclosed in quotation marks.

indirect quotation A statement that reports something someone said rather than quoting the exact words.