Coherence

[Bill Mann]

I want to reply to Tom H, to his question:


What exactly do you mean by "an impression of wholeness"?

This will help us with list techniques as well.

People have been joining the list quite frequently in the past week or so.  It
has grown about 40%, and so a significant number, including Tom H, did not
recieve the first posting on coherence, which was from me.  I repeat most of it
here, since it answers his question and many of us have not seen it:

===================================

What is coherence?

It seems to be taxonomically in the category of personal mental experiences, a
kind of impression that comes out of the process of reading a text.  We treat it
as an attribute of the text.

It seems to be an informal thing, something to be accounted for rather than a
part of an account, although it certainly could be a part of a description of
some larger phenomenon,  communication for example.

My own definition has changed a bit recently.  One component of coherence for me
is the impression that every part of the text has an evident role.  Not only
that it must have some role, but that I the reader or hearer, after some
consideration, could describe the role of any chosen part.  The opposite is the
presence of a _non sequitur_ -- a portion that does not fit, has no clear role.

I want to add to that another aspect:  A coherent text does not give the
impression that something is missing.  If we find:

"I have two reasons for saying that.  First, they try harder."  <END OF TEXT>

there is an impression of a gap.  There are many ways to produce such an
impression.

So:  Evident role for every part.  No appearance of gaps.

Is that what you think it is?
===================================

This is what my short phrase, "impression of wholeness", was intended to bring
back into folks memories.  To clarify my notion of the distinction between
coherence and cohesion perhaps it is as much detail as we need.

===================================

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Bill Mann