{"id":107,"date":"2015-06-01T18:10:51","date_gmt":"2015-06-01T18:10:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.candelalearning.com\/englishcomp2kscopexmaster\/?post_type=chapter&p=107"},"modified":"2016-05-31T19:28:55","modified_gmt":"2016-05-31T19:28:55","slug":"cohesion-what-do-people-mean-when-they-say-my-writing-doesnt-flow-open2010writingchapter9-pdf","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-englishcomp2kscopexmaster\/chapter\/cohesion-what-do-people-mean-when-they-say-my-writing-doesnt-flow-open2010writingchapter9-pdf\/","title":{"raw":"Cohesion: What do People Mean When They Say My Writing Doesn't \"Flow\"","rendered":"Cohesion: What do People Mean When They Say My Writing Doesn’t “Flow”"},"content":{"raw":"

Before You Read<\/h2>\r\nWrite 750 to 1,000 words in response to this prompt, keeping in mind that you're going to be working with this piece of writing extensively in the coming days\u2014not only in this chapter but in other chapters related to style:\r\n\r\nAs a public university that receives substantial support from the state legislature, the U has an obligation to serve the people of the state of Utah. However, there can be disagreements on what that service means. On one hand, it can mean admitting as many Utah residents as possible in order to increase the state's population of college-educated citizens. On the other hand, it can mean increasing admission requirements to fulfill the U's position as the \"flagship\" university in the state. Where do you come down?\r\n\r\n \r\n

Cohesion, or \u201cFlow\u201d\u2014An Overview<\/h2>\r\n\"PhotoMany (student) writers have turned in papers only to have their readers (more often than not, their teachers) hand the papers back with comments that the writing doesn't \u201cflow.\u201d\r\n\r\nUnfortunately, teachers may not always be explicit about what they mean\u2014just that it doesn't \u201cread\u201d or \u201csound\u201d right or that the ideas don't progress from one to another. This chapter is about what \u201cflow\u201d actually means and how to make sure your writing does it.\r\n\r\nBy \u201cflow,\u201d most readers mean what grammarians and linguists call cohesion<\/strong>\u2014the property of a text to hold together at the level of sentences and paragraphs. Of course, cohesion is good in any communication medium, and each medium can present challenges for it. If you're sending text messages back and forth to a friend and the network sends them out of order, the result can be confusing: you might have written \u201cthank GOD\u201d in response to some piece of news, but your friend might not have gotten your message until after she texted \u201cgotta go.\u201d Oops. If you're speaking to someone on a train or bus and something outside the window catches your attention, you might say something about it, and the other person might say, \u201cwait\u2014what?\u201d\r\n\r\nBut in both those cases, you can quickly and easily clear up the confusion. Speech and texting are more or less synchronous<\/strong> media: that is, they involve people communicating at the same time and often in the same (virtual) space. Writing, however\u2014in the traditional sense, anyway\u2014is different, because it's asynchronous<\/strong>. It also requires an important trade-off. Writing has worked well for a long time as a communication technology because it's relatively easy to distribute. Someone using writing to communicate doesn't have to move from place to place: she may simply write something down and send it. However, to use a metaphor from very current communication technologies, writing has low bandwidth compared to other media. If someone is speaking to you, you can infer meaning from words themselves but also from vocal inflections, facial expressions, hand gestures, posture, and even from how close the other person is to you. You can't do that when you write and read. So, writers and readers can send and receive on the cheap, but they carry a burden of making their words work extraordinarily hard.\r\n\r\nThis idea has a very clear implication for your own written arguments\u2014an important enough implication that we'd say it pretty loudly if you were standing right in front of us. But, since this is writing, we'll use boldface: just because an argument you're making is clear in your own head, that doesn't mean it's automatically clear to people who are reading the written version of your argument<\/strong>. That\u2019s one of the reasons it\u2019s a good idea to circulate the writing you do to others before you turn it in for a grade or circulate it in high-stakes situations.\r\n\r\nFortunately, the to-do list for \u201cflow\u201d is relatively short. Throughout Englishlanguage writing, it turns out that there is a small number of strategies for achieving cohesion. These strategies help writers follow a key principle for communicating with readers as effectively as possible on the assumption that they\u2019re not looking over their readers\u2019 shoulders pointing out what they really<\/em> need to know. That principle is called the given-new contract<\/strong>. This contract implies that you as a writer will start your projected readers with something relatively familiar and then\u00a0lead them to less familiar material. It's an idea that is simple to state, but it's powerful, and it works at different levels of a document. At the level of overall document design, consistent visual items on each page (page number location, headings, \u201cwhite\u201d space, fonts) help create a familiar visual field that works like a container for whatever new information is coming next. As you read earlier in this book, a lot of a writer\u2019s job in an introduction, after all, is orienting readers so that they\u2019re at least familiar with the broad topic before the writer gets specific\u2014with an argument, for example. But the contract helps sentence-level cohesion, as well. It\u2019s very helpful to readers if you create a cycle in which you try to put \u201cgiven\u201d information at the start of sentences and shift \u201cnew\u201d information to the ends, and then recycle the \u201cnew\u201d information as \u201cgiven\u201d information in sentences that come up. The principle of end emphasis<\/strong> helps here: readers tend to latch more onto how sentences end than onto how they begin. Skilled writers know this is often the case, so they\u2019ll reserve end-of-sentence slots for new or challenging information, since they know they often have a little more of their readers\u2019 attention at those spots anyway.\r\n\r\nThe given-new contract and the concept of end emphasis are a little tough to explain in abstract terms, so here\u2019s an example followed by some analysis. We\u2019ve numbered the sentences to help make the analysis clear.\r\n

1 This textbook is freely circulable under the terms of a Creative Commons (\u201cCC\u201d) license. 2 CC is a nonprofit organization that helps content creators, such as textbook authors, share their products in more diverse ways than traditional copyright allows. 3 While typical copyright restricts others from using an author\u2019s work unless they have the author\u2019s express consent, CC allows authors to pick and choose which restrictions to apply to their work by using one of several free licenses. 4 For example, this book is available via an \u201cAttribution-NonCommercialShareAlike\u201d agreement: adopters of the textbook may use it free of charge and may even modify it without permission, but they must agree not to try to sell it or share it with others under different licensing terms.<\/p>\r\nEach sentence in this passage shows our attempt to honor the given-new contract. Here's how:\r\n

    \r\n \t
  1. The first sentence introduces the term \u201cCreative Commons\u201d near its end. We\u2019re assuming that you may not know (much) about CC, so we\u2019re trying to exploit end emphasis to introduce it here very early in the paragraph.<\/li>\r\n \t
  2. This sentence immediately recycles CC and defines the term more fully. The sentence ends with the important (and \u201cnew\u201d) idea that CC allows for a wider range of options than copyright.<\/li>\r\n \t
  3. Now, the passage explains in a little more detail the point it just made about copyright restrictions and goes on to clarify the contrast with CC, ending with the \u201cnew\u201d information that CC allows authors to choose from several licenses.<\/li>\r\n \t
  4. Not surprisingly, the next sentence shows what the previous sentence introduced by giving an example of a relevant CC license.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\nIn addition to using the principle of end emphasis, writers who honor the given-new contract frequently use several other strategies.\r\n\r\n \r\n

    Stock transition words and phrases<\/h3>\r\nMany writers first learn to make their writing flow by using explicit, specialpurpose transitional devices. You may hear these devices called \u201csignposts,\u201d because they work much like highway and street signs. When steel boxes weighing 2 tons and more are rolling around at high speeds, it's important that their operators are repeatedly and clearly told exactly where and when to go with as little ambiguity as possible.\r\n\r\nHere's a list of stock, generic, all-purpose transition words and phrases, organized by their basic functions. Keep in mind that there are differences among these that can make a difference and that determining what those differences is is beyond the scope of this book. It's a matter of experience.\r\n\r\n\"Photo<\/a>To add or show sequence<\/strong>: again, also, and, and then, besides, equally important, finally, first, further, furthermore, in addition, in the first place, last, moreover, next, second, still, too\r\n\r\nTo compare<\/strong>: also, in the same way, likewise, similarly\r\n\r\nTo contrast<\/strong>: although, and yet, but, but at the same time, despite, even so, even though, for all that, however, in contrast, in spite of, nevertheless, notwithstanding, on the contrary, on the other hand, regardless, still, though, yet\r\n\r\nTo give examples or intensify<\/strong>: after all, an illustration of, even, for example, for instance, indeed, in fact, it is true, of course, specifically, that is, to illustrate, truly\r\n\r\nTo indicate place<\/strong>: above, adjacent to, below, elsewhere, farther on, here, near, nearby, on the other side, opposite to, there, to the east, to the left\r\n\r\nTo indicate time<\/strong>: after a while, afterward, as long as, as soon as, at last, at length, at that time, before, earlier, formerly, immediately, in the meantime, in the past, lately, later, meanwhile, now, presently, shortly, simultaneously, since, so far, soon, subsequently, then, thereafter, until, until now, when\r\n\r\nTo repeat, summarize, or conclude<\/strong>: all in all, altogether, in brief, in conclusion, in other words, in particular, in short, in simpler terms, in summary, on the whole, that is, to put it differently, to summarize\r\n\r\nTo show cause and effect<\/strong>: accordingly, as a result, because, consequently, for this purpose, hence, otherwise, since, then, therefore, thereupon, thus, to this end, with this object in mind\r\n\r\nAs we just told you, avoiding ambiguity in academic and professional writing is important. But it's not as important as avoiding it on highways, in factories, or around high-voltage equipment or explosives. In those contexts, lots of signposts with lots of redundancy are vital. In many writing situations, you can expect your readers to pick up other useful clues for cohesion, so it's somewhat less important to use a lot of these \u201cstock\u201d or generic transition words. In fact, if you overuse them (for instance, in an essay in which your first paragraph starts with \u201cfirst,\u201d your second paragraph starts with \u201csecond,\u201d and on and on), it can get annoying.\r\n\r\n \r\n

    Pronouns<\/h3>\r\nIf you're old enough vaguely to remember the Schoolhouse Rock series, you might remember the episode about pronouns (\u201che,\u201d \u201cshe,\u201d \u201cher,\u201d \u201chim,\u201d \u201cyou,\u201d \u201cwe,\u201d \u201cthey,\u201d \u201cit,\u201d \u201cone,\u201d \u201cthis,\u201d \u201cthat,\u201d and some others) and how they can stand for nouns, even if the nouns have long names. The idea is that pronouns make speaking and writing more efficient. But you may not have learned that pronouns are at least as powerful as cohesive devices. Since pronouns work by referring back to nouns\u00a0that have previously been mentioned, they can help writers carry the ideas their nouns represent across sentences and paragraphs.\r\n\r\nYou may have been told to limit your use of pronouns or even avoid them altogether. This is bad advice, but it's understandable: pronouns work very well when they clearly refer to their antecedents, but they can create significant comprehension problems, misdirection, and vagueness when they don't.\r\n\r\n \r\n

    Repetition<\/h3>\r\nContrary to a lot of advice novice writers get, repetition is effective. For example, as you'll learn later in this book (or now if you want to read ahead, of course), many rhetorical strategies that are thousands of years old and that exist in several languages use repetition. It's a time-honored way to signal importance, create a sense of rhythm, and help audiences remember key ideas. But repetition gets a bad reputation because it can become redundant. (Yes, that sentence used repetition to get its point across. It's no accident that it had a lot of \u201cr\u201ds.)\r\n\r\n\"Photo\r\n\r\nRepetition can involve individual words, phrases, or grammatical structures. When you repeat similar structural elements but not necessarily the words themselves, you are using parallelism<\/strong>, a special variety of repetition that not only helps cohesion but also helps you to communicate that similarly important ideas should be read together. When sentences are written using non-parallel parts, it's certainly possible for readers to understand them, but it creates work for the reader that usually isn't necessary. Compare these sentences:\r\n
    Student writers should learn to start projects early, how to ask for advice from teachers and peers, and when to focus on correcting grammar.\r\n\r\nStudent writers should learn to start projects early, to ask for advice from teachers and peers, and to figure out when to focus on correcting their grammar.<\/blockquote>\r\nSee the difference? The first sentence is comprehensible: the commas, for example, let you know that you're reading a list. But the extra adverbs (\u201chow\u201d and \u201cwhen\u201d) get in the way of the sentence's clarity. And that problem, in turn, means that it's hard to see clearly how each item in the list relates to the others. In the revised sentence, though, it's a lot clearer that each of the three items is something student writers should \u201clearn to\u201d do. That relationship is made clear by the repeating grammatical pattern:\r\n

    Student writers should learn<\/p>\r\n\r\n