Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

50%
+0 −0
Q&A Larger structure - followup to Sense of Style by Steven Pinker

I have read Steven Pinker's Sense of Style, which is a great book. In chapter 4, he talks about how to form lucid coherent sentences, and in chapter 5, called "Arcs of Coherence", he extends his ...

2 answers  ·  posted 7y ago by user56834‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T06:41:29Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/28914
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar user56834‭ · 2019-12-08T06:41:29Z (over 4 years ago)
I have read Steven Pinker's Sense of Style, which is a great book.

In chapter 4, he talks about how to form lucid coherent sentences, and in chapter 5, called "Arcs of Coherence", he extends his analysis of coherence to relations between sentences within a paragraph (and also somewhat about coherence between subsequent paragraphs).

I think his analysis is truly brilliant, about how a text is not merely tree-like, because there are connections between sentences apart from the tree-like structure of chapter -\> paragraph -\> Sentence -\> words. His analysis of how to make a paragraph coherent by connecting sentences in specific ways is truly very helpful.

Also he has a brilliant analysis (more in chapter 4) of how lucid prose is created by taking into account the effect that the order of words has on the memory of the reader.

However, he does not really extend this analysis to the level of chapters/pages. He does not really address the question of "how do we write entire chapters so as to make them coherent with each other". "How do we make connections between sentences in different sections/chapters, so as to make them coherent".

**So my question is: For people who have read Steven Pinker's chapter on Arcs of Coherence and found it as useful as I did, do you know any other writers who have similar insights, but about how to connect elements of a larger text, to make the larger structure of the text more coherent?**

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2017-06-26T06:41:54Z (almost 7 years ago)
Original score: 3