While creativity, flexibility, and storytelling are necessary skills for technical writers, technical writing is not creative writing. In other words, readers of technical writing are not seeking entertainment but to get information quickly and easily. Therefore, technical writers must learn to communicate complex ideas simply and clearly. This article will briefly cover principles of cohesion, coherence, and emphasis as taught by Joseph M. Williams in Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace.
Cohesion & Coherence
Now that we’ve analyzed some ways to make sentences clearer, let’s zoom out and look at paragraphs. There are two main principles to follow for enhancing the clarity of a paragraph: cohesion and coherence.
Cohesion is a paragraph’s sense of flow. In a cohesive paragraph, the beginning of each sentence fits with the end of the last sentence, allowing readers to quickly follow the writer’s thought process and ideas. To create this flow, start sentences with information introduced in the previous sentence, and end the sentence with new information. In other words, each sentence should go from old to new information.
While cohesion makes paragraphs fluid, this ease of reading doesn’t do anything if the paragraph itself does not make sense. This is where coherence, or a paragraph’s sense of the whole, comes in. To make a paragraph coherent, get to your topic quickly and avoid piling up introductory elements ahead of it, especially conjunctions that don’t do any real work.
Emphasis
Be aware that the information at the beginning and end of sentences stands out to the reader. Readers use the beginning of sentences to figure out the topic, and they use the end of sentences to pick out the most important information. In other words, the emphasis of the sentence is at its end, so you will want to ensure those endings are succinct and clear. You can:
- Trim the end.
- Shift peripheral ideas to the left.
- Shift new information to the right.
Begin with the right topic, and end with the right emphasis.
Conclusion
When it comes to clarity, the most important principle is to be deliberate about the choices you make. Choose to get to the point, choose to emphasize important information, choose to write with clarity.
Further Resources
Writing for Clarity training – https://byu.box.com/s/he7a2vlsfbv2umybdkgl8wahi4jgdlgi
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/mechanics/sentence_clarity.html