Repeat Key Words and Phrases
Repetition is another way of knitting together a paragraph. A sprinkling of key words and phrases improves coherence by keeping the main point in front of the reader in the most obvious way. The repeated key word is italicized.
Tears of hurt and frustration pricked at the corner of my eyes as the now-familiar pain seared my leg. I sat down and looked around the room: beige walls, beige ceiling, beige floor tiles. In one corner was a small cot with a beige bedspread, and in the opposite corner a sink, mirror, and beige waste basket. The shades were drawn and the lights were much dimmer than they had been in the hall. Gradually I relaxed and waited. - Laura LaPierre, student
Use Parallel Structure
Parallel structure is repetition of a certain kind; it is repetition in a series. Parallelism can occur on the word, phrase, clause, or whole-sentence level (see SENT 6a). In the following paragraph Ardrey’s use of parallelism knits the sentences into a seamless whole; sentences 1 through 4 use one pattern of parallelism, and sentences 5 and 6 another. The parallel structures are italicized.
(1) The male herring gull is a creature of sufficient ingenuity that if he picks up a mussel with a shell too hard for his beak to break, he will carry it to a height and drop it on a hard rock. (2) He is a creature of sufficient loyalty and perception to guarantee that he will never attack his own mate, and will recognize her among dozens flying into the colony at a distance to defy human binoculars. (3) He is a creature of sufficient social sophistication that, while many arrive in the spring already paired, definite areas in the colony which Tinbergen calls” clubs” will be set aside as meeting places for the unpaired. (4) He is a creature also, as we have seen, of such sensitive social adjustment that the arriving flock will make “decisions” of mood and readiness as if it were one being. (5) So dependent is the herring gull on the community of his citizenship that he would probably be unable to breed were he to return in the spring to the wrong gull town. (6) So powerful and incomprehensible is his attachment for home that, like the albatross, a pair may return year after year to nest in precisely the same spot, although the North Sea’s winter storms will have effaced all landmarks to guide his eye. - Robert Ardrey, “Herring Gull”
Use Transitions in Link Paragraphs
Just as transitions are used to link sentences within a paragraph, so are they used to link paragraphs themselves. Because each new paragraph indicates a further progression of thought in the composition, transitions help the reader follow along. In the passage that follows, transitions are used to link the first and second paragraphs and the second and third paragraphs; the transitions are italicized.
The age of television began in Canada in 1952, five years behind the United States, when a station in Montreal, and one in Toronto two days later, signed onto the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. A third station in Vancouver went on the air three days later.
However, television broadcasting in the 1950s was a far cry from what it is today. Shows were in black and white (Canada didn’t begin colour broadcasting until 1966), they were broadcast live and, as you might suspect, there were more than a few bugs to work out of the system.
Currently, television is a staple of Canadian life. Ninety-nine per cent of all Canadian households have at least one television set, and Canada’s longest running television show, Hockey Night in Canada, has been on the air over 40 years.
WPTips
Testing for Transitional Words
Test the coherence of your composition by putting the transitional words and phrases in boldface or underlining them. If you have surprisingly few, you may need to strengthen the connections between your thoughts by adding transitions, both within paragraphs and between them.
