Certain Cohesion Elements and the Readability of Technical Paragraphs

Journal of Technical Writing and Communication Oct 1982

Certain Cohesion Elements and the Readability of Technical Paragraphs

Jack Selzer

Abstract

To determine how certain cohesion elements - the given-new contract, pronouns, synonyms, and topic sentences – affect the readability of technical paragraphs, six alternative paragraphs were composed, two “models” and four others carefully varied to feature the four factors under consideration. Then each passage was tested for its readability when subjects were administered a cloze procedure and a recall exercise for each paragraph. The results show that violations of the given-new contract make technical paragraphs more difficult to read; that changing repeated words to pronouns makes passages more difficult to follow; that using synonyms (instead of repetitions) makes prose harder to read; and that deleting a topic sentence may impede a reader's comprehension. Writing teachers, then, might consider these results when they direct students in the production of connected discourse. And researchers might use this methodology to investigate other influences on the readability of connected discourse.

Journal: Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
Published: 1982-10-01
DOI: 10.1177/004728168201200403
Topics: multimodality affect and writing

Citation Context

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Gattis (2023)

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Gross (1984)

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Cites in this index (2)

Beaugrande (1978)

Communication in Technical Writing

Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
Braddock (1974)

The Frequency and Placement of Topic Sentences in Expository Prose

Research in the Teaching of English

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