An important benefit of this is that by distancing yourself from your ideas and putting them in order for your reader, you are forced to shape your own nebulous feelings into clear thoughts. Between “getting it down” and “handing it in” good writers show respect for their readers by organizing their material into recognizable patterns.
When Gustave Flaubert asked “Has a drinking song ever been written by a drunken man?” he meant a coherent song. You should respond with genuine feeling and without inhibition to what stimulates you – in our case, a set of texts. When you think about it, there’s no contradiction in the advice of these two American writers. It’s no better to hand in a detached bundle of statements starting nowhere in particular, training along and then fading out – and call it a theme. My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,Īnd I must pause till it come back to me.You wouldn’t hand in a lot of sticks and boards bunched together and call it a table. O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,Īnd men have lost their reason. What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him? You all did love him once, not without cause: I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition? When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:Īmbition should be made of sterner stuff: Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill: He hath brought many captives home to Rome He was my friend, faithful and just to me: Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest. The good is oft interred with their bones
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. In this speech from Julius Caesar, Shakespeare creates coherence through the use of examples and repetition as Marc Antony questions Brutus' character.įriends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears School uniforms would create an environment where all students dress similarly and no student is singled out as a member of a specific clique. In a recent interview, students in one middle school discussed a specific clique of girls based on their attire, including "scrunchies" and "large sweatshirts that cover their shorts." Solely based on attire, students recognized members of this clique in their schools, and saw themselves as excluded from the group. In addition, outside of street gang activity, clothing often creates cliques in schools. Gang activity and violence distracts from a safe and effective school environment, and through the discipline process, students are excluded from the classroom. In many urban areas, clothing is often used to signify membership in or allegiance to a specific street gang. School uniforms are necessary due to the divisions and cliques that are often created when uniforms are not present. Coherence is produced through the use of transition words and phrases that lead from the topic sentence to specific examples and explanation.
Notice the logical sequencing of the argument in this paragraph on the need for school uniforms. It can also refer to the text as a whole-is the entire argument coherent.Įxamples of Coherence from Literature and Essays Coherence can refer to sentences and small portions of the text-such as a paragraph or chapter. Coherence is also more easily achieved when the writer uses strong sequencing of ideas and events in the writing. There are connections and transitions between ideas in sentences, paragraphs, and the entire text. Coherent writing is produced when the writer has a strong organizational structure.