Ensuring smooth flow and cohesion in your writing
Ever tried your hand at a jigsaw puzzle? You have all the pieces but need to work out where each piece goes: the picture emerges only when each piece is in its place. Disorderly writing is like those scattered pieces, whereas cohesive and smooth-flowing writing is the completed puzzle. The writing of scientists and academics is often disjointed because in their mind’s eye, they see only the completed version, failing to spot discontinuities in their own writing. Effective writers, on the other hand, provide signposts in their writing to help readers, and this makes their journey smoother. This article discusses the devices—headings and subheadings, typical connecting words, phrases, and punctuation marks—that show how sentences and paragraphs form a coherent whole and make clearer to readers the overall structure of a piece of writing and the underlying logic implicit in the writer’s mind.
However, clear structure and logic come before writing and should be clear in your mind: the connective devices can only signal the structure and join the parts that are already in order. That logical ordering remains the author’s responsibility. Let us examine the different kinds of connecting devices that help you produce smooth-flowing writing. Think of them as pieces of hardware: screws or nuts and bolts to hold things together, washers to keep them apart, grooves to keep things in place, “elbows” to obtain a 90° angle, and so on. You could also think of them as traffic lights: red for stop; amber for wait; green for go. Such connective devices are usually referred to as transitions or linking words.
Choosing appropriate transitions
The transitions that you choose should suggest how the words that follow relate to the words that come before the transition itself; in other words, the transition should suggest whether what follows is “more of the same” or introduce a note of contrast or give examples or provide an explanation or offer a reason, and so on.
Transitions that signal similarity. Words such as and, also, and moreover, for example, suggest additions and work like the plus sign (+) in mathematics. They offer a handy device to join two or more words or phrases or even ideas, as in “Ants and cockroaches are insects whereas mice and rats are rodents.” These transitions do not call for any change in the direction but simply add information. Incidentally, note that the previous example also uses a different kind of linking word, namely whereas, which signals contrast.
In using or as a transition, you need to be careful about pairing it with a comma, because or with a comma before it suggests that what follows is more or less the same as what precedes, as in “Linking words, or transitions, signal relationships between bits of text”; without the comma, however, or emphasizes the notion of options or alternatives, as in “You may pay in cash or by using a credit card.”
Transitions that signal contrast. Transitions such as but, although, in contrast, and on the other hand introduce contrast, as in “Although many people consider spiders as insects, spiders have eight legs whereas insects have only six.” Clearly, a change of direction is called upon, and by using a contrastive transition, the writer signals that change of direction in advance, much as a blinking tail light of a car signals that the car is about to turn.
Transitions that signal explanations or elaboration. Examples, analogies, repetitions using paraphrasing, etc. are often used in reinforcing abstract or hard-to-follow concepts and signaled by transitions that follow the first mention of such a concept. These transitions comprise such phrases as for example, such as, in other words, and that is, as in the following sentence: “Homeothermic animals, that is, animals such as mammals and birds, maintain their body temperature within a narrow range irrespective of ambient temperature.”
Because a colon also signals such a relationship, that punctuation mark can be used as a substitute for the actual words that signal the transition, especially in lists such as “Three parameters affect the ‘color’ of a page: typeface, spacing between words, and spacing between lines of text.”
Transitions that signal cause and effect. We are hard-wired to look for causes or agents for every action and often turn to science to know the reasons behind many commonly observed phenomena, which is why transitions such as because, due to, and owing to are frequently found in research papers. For emphasis, words that signal cause-and-effect relationships can be used even to begin a sentence, as in “Because the seedlings grew on a stony soil, their growth was poor” and “Due to increasing deforestation, soil erosion is now more severe than before.”
Transitions that signal dependencies. One proof of a cause-and-effect relationship is the close bond between the two: one cannot occur in the absence of the other. The fact that event A is dependent on event B is often signaled by expressions like if . . . then, provided, and so long as. Consider the following example sentences: “If the weighing scale is accurate to the nearest gram, the results (expressed in kg) can be given up to 3 decimal places” and “So long as enough nitrogen is supplied, it does not matter whether it is given through chemical fertilizers or through organic manures.”
Signaling document structure
So far, we have discussed the words that signal transitions, but what about document structure? That is where headings, subheadings, and minor headings (three levels in this case but there could be more levels in a lengthy and complex text) have a role to play. When the levels of such headings are indicated unambiguously, using appropriate typography and layout, they allow readers a bird’s-eye view of the entire document.
Arranging information in logical sequence
Lastly, good flow requires an orderly sequence the logic of which should be clear to the reader or should be stated in so many words. Take for example the results of a survey of monthly electricity consumption of households. An illogical sequence will present the results in the order in which the data were collected; a logical sequence, on the other hand, would present the data in a definite sequence, by arranging the data in terms of total consumption or average income of the surveyed households or their geographical location and so on. Whatever the basis, it should be stated explicitly upfront, as in “The results of the survey are discussed in terms of the number of different electrical appliances owned by the households.”
Conclusion
To sum up, to ensure smooth flow, the results of research must be presented and discussed in an orderly sequence, highlighting the overall structure of the narrative with suitable headings at the macro level and appropriate transitions at the micro level. To paraphrase Randy Olson1, the facts you present may be interesting and even curious, but without a logical and coherent structure and helpful links that highlight their interconnections, they will remain “just a pile of sundry facts.”
Reference
- Olson R. 2015. Houston, We Have a Narrative: why science needs story, p. 88. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 260 pp.
Unsure if your manuscript is well-organized and well-structured enough? Have an expert peer review your manuscript before you submit it to a journal and minimize the chances of negative reviewer comments. Try Editage's pre-submission peer review service.
Comments
You're looking to give wings to your academic career and publication journey. We like that!
Why don't we give you complete access! Create a free account and get unlimited access to all resources & a vibrant researcher community.
Subscribe to Conducting Research
