4.3: Revising for Coherence (including transitions)

When you revise for coherence, you make sure the points of your paper are ordered effectively and flow into each other in a logical manner. This means rethinking the organization of your paragraphs and the transitions between paragraphs, but also scrutinizing your paragraph structure to ensure coherence within separate pieces of the paper.

Below is one method (though not the only method) for checking coherence in your paper.

1. Find your paper’s paragraphs. Hopefully, you thought to paragraph your paper as you wrote the paper, but if not, now is the time to consider the sections of your paper. This is also the point to scrutinize the size of your paragraphs. Remember, five sentences is the bare minimum for a college level paragraph, but a well-developed paragraph is closer to nine or eleven sentences— or even longer since there’s no specific number of sentences that should be in a paragraph and we tend to favor longer, more fully-developed paragraphs in academic prose.
2. Move on to analyze and revise each paragraph individually. Each paragraph should include a topic sentence as well as a sentence at the bottom of the paragraph that wraps it up and relates it back to the whole paper. Between these two elements, the bulk of each body paragraph should be based in specific details, evidence and reasoning. Check to be sure that you have transitions between each of your separate pieces of evidence, description, etc. (see the end of this section for more help with transitions)
3. Double-check the topic sentence in each paragraph. Just as your whole paper has to have a point, so should each section have a sentence that offers some generalization, some point, some claim that that section is intended to support. The topic sentence of your paragraph does not have to be the first sentence in the paragraph-- instead, you might build to this point-- but do be sure the main point of each paragraph is clearly stated in a topic sentence.
4. Think hard about whether you want any particular body paragraph to be the last point in the body. Generally, organize paragraphs so that your best or strongest point comes last in the body paragraphs; this is called emphatic organization. If you can think of no good reason why you have your last body paragraph where you do, revise so that your last paragraph is your first paragraph and see how this affects the reading of the paper. This principle simply reflects the needs of readers to know where they are and where they are going. Nothing confuses a reader more than moving from paragraph to paragraph with no sense of the logical progression of your argument. Such an essay feels like pudding with an occasional raisin to chew on, but not in any particular order.
5. Consider the ordering of your body paragraphs. Try to explain to yourself why you put the paragraphs of the paper in the order you did. If you arranged the parts of your paper because that’s the order in which they occurred to you, your readers are likely not to see any rationale for moving through your paper in this random order.

• If you have three (or four, or whatever) reasons for something, why are the reasons in the order they are in? (By the way, beware of organization-by-number: “. . . for three reasons. First . . . Second . . . Third . . .” If the only relationship you can demonstrate among your arguments is “first-second-third,” your essay will probably be perceived as unsophisticated. Most significant arguments have substantive relationships: they are related not merely by number but by content.)
• If you have ordered the parts of your paper from cause-to-effect, why did you do that? Why not effect-to-cause?
• If you organized your paper to echo the organization of the text you are writing about, why have you done that? If you did, you risk having written a mere summary.
• If you organized your paper to match the terms of the assignment, is that what your instructor wanted, or did your instructor want something more original from you?
• If you organized your paper around major topics in your assignment (“Compare and contrast Freud and Jung in terms of the role of society in the development of their theories”) did you write about, say, Freud first and Jung second simply because that was the order in the assignment?

There are so many principles of order that we cannot list them all here. We can only urge you to identify the one you chose and then to justify it as the best one from among the many possible.

Another option for revising for coherence and unification is reverse outlining. See this video from the Writing Center at UNC Chapel Hill for help with reverse outlining.

Transitions and Coherence

The points between paragraphs are the key places to look when revising for coherence: do you show how the paragraphs are connected as you move through the paper? Try to go past "First," "Second," "Last" and words that show simple relationships. Many times, it is good to reflect on your assignment when checking for coherence; chances are your teacher asked you to write using a specific rhetorical mode, including cause and effect, compare and contrast, and process.

Consider this list of transitions to help you vary the transitions between and within paragraphs in your paper:

Relationship	Transitional Words and phrases
Order	Also, next, last, finally first, second third
Time	after, afterward, at last, before, currently, during, earlier, immediately, later, meanwhile, now, recently, simultaneously, subsequently, then
Similarity	also, in the same way, just as, likewise, similarly
Contrast/Difference	but, however, in spite of, on the other hand, nevertheless, nonetheless, notwithstanding, in contrast, on the contrary, still, yet
Example	for example, for instance, namely, specifically, to illustrate
Emphasis	even, indeed, in fact, of course, truly
Cause and Effect	accordingly, consequently, hence, so, therefore, thus
Location/Position	above, adjacent, below, beyond, here, in front, in back, nearby, there
Additional Support or Evidence	additionally, again, also, and, as well, besides, equally important, further, furthermore, in addition, moreover, then
Conclusion/Summary	finally, in a word, in brief, briefly, in the end, in the final analysis, on the whole, thus, to conclude, to summarize, in sum, to sum up, in summary

See this page from the Writing Center at UNC Chapel Hill for more help with transitions.