VI Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2014

The requirement of unity demands that all the material be about one definite thing or idea. Every part of a united text has some bearing upon the central subject. There are no irrelevancies or excursions into side issues. Everything concerns the principal idea. The stricter you are in deciding what belongs to the subject of the text, the less cleaning up will be required in the latter stages of writing.

Coherence is related to unity, it brings in the additional factor of order. If we can say that unity means a general relationship of all the parts, we can say that coherence means an arrangement of the parts for a progressive development. It is possible to think of a mass of material which would have a high degree of unity but a low degree of coherence. Such material would have reference to the same thing but it would lack organization, i.e. it would not reflect sequence, or an explanation by cause and effect, or any other pattern of development. Such material needs to be organized before it can be communicated. Coherence may be likened to a thread along which the separate parts or ideas are strung. It is not enough to be all of a general subject; they must also be placed in an order.

Unity and coherence together form the basic test of intelligibility. They relate tj the general scope and pattern of the text, and, above everything else, they show whether the writer has enough control of his material to write clearly.