Unity and Coherence

 Writing effective essays

You’ve already learned that an essay should be organized into an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. The next step is to make sure that all three parts of the essay work together to explain your topic clearly.

Unity in writing

What is unity?

Unity in writing is the connection of all ideas to a single topic. In an essay, all ideas should restate to the thesis statement, and the supporting ideas in a body paragraph should restate to the topic sentence.

Editing an essay for unity

Keeping unity in an essay

One way to keep unity in an essay is to edit the outline for ideas that are not relevant to the thesis statement or topic sentences. Likewise, after you have written the essay, it is helpful to review the text and look for ideas that do not relate to the thesis or the topic sentences.

Coherence in writing

What is coherence?

Coherence is related to unity. Ideas that are arranged in a clear and logical way are coherent. When a text is unified and coherent, the reader can easily understand the main points.

Creating an outline helps make a well-organized essay. When organizing your ideas, think about what type of organization is the best for your topic or essay type. Here are some examples of types of writing and good ways to organize them.

Type of writing	Type of organization
Chronology (historical events, personal narratives, processes)	Order by time or order of events / steps
Description	Order by position, size, and shape of things
Classification	Group ideas and explain them in a logical order
Comparison/ contrast	Organize in point-by-point or block style
Argumentation/ persuasion and cause effect	Order from least important to most important