Examples of Coherent Texts
Coherence Through Word Repetition and Parallel Structure
"Regolith"
from Physical Elements of Geography
The sentences of this paragraph are listed and numbered to facilitate discussion.
The initial use of a key word is highlighted in orange and its subsequent appearances are indicated in blue.
- The accumulated materials resulting from weathering and awaiting transportation often cover to some depth the parent rocks from which they have been derived.
- These accumulations of disintegrated and decomposed rock fragments are referred to as the regolith.
- The thickness of the regolith depends upon the relative rates of its formation by weathering and its removal by the gradtional agents.
- On steep slopes where gravity or rain wash removes rock fragments about as fast as they are loosened, or in dry or cold areas where weathering is very slow, the regolith may be thin or patchy, permitting the bare and solid rock to be seen.
- These exposures are referred to as outcrops (Trewartha et al. 229).
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Sentence Number
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Links to Sentence
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Links from Sentence
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Total Number of Links
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1.
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0
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7
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7
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2.
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2
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3
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5
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3.
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4
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3
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7
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4.
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7
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1
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8
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5.
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1
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0
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1
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Totals
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14
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14
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28
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In this paragraph "rock fragments" and "rock," are considered synonymous. Also "remove" is taken to be synonymous with "transportation." Finally, the key phrase "thin and patchy" in sentence four and "these exposures" in sentence five are considered to refer to the same concept, "outcrops."
In the paragraph on otosclerosis, there are five key terms and the total number of links is twenty-two. The average number of links connecting any one node in the network is 3.6. With this paragraph, there are six key terms and the average number of links both to and from a sentence is 5.4.
What generalizations can be drawn from this comparison? The paragraph on regolith has both more key terms and more links among the terms. The greater number of links suggests a tighter cohesion and therefore a greater density of information. Another example provides an interesting contrast.