Hello everyone!

I have noticed that the vast majority of you have identified conciseness as one of the effective writing
concepts that you find challenging. While it is probably the most common issue the average writer has
(including myself) there are also other concepts/rules I find challenging, so I will post about a different
one instead. One rule I find myself struggling to abide by sometimes is being coherent. When I write, I
have a thousand ideas running through my head that I need to get on paper before I forget them!
However, the result is an unorganized collection of sentences that have yet to be arranged in a coherent
fashion. Sometimes my ideas make sense to me on paper but not necessarily to the reader. Sometimes I
assume that the links I make in my head come naturally to the reader, and that I do not need to explain
further. Now, I realize my mistakes and one way I try to overcome my lack of coherent writing is to read
my paper out loud and ask myself what the reader would think. Coherence is the logical arrangement
and structure of a paper or piece of writing, which allows your paper to flow properly and appear well
argued/easy to follow by the reader.

Here is an example of Coherence. Consider the following sentences:

Lack of Coherence:

I ate pizza for lunch today. I got it from my favorite place. My parents had a business meeting, so I had
to take care of myself. I had to walk home today. I got to pick my favorite toppings. My dad hates
pineapple on pizza.

This paragraph is a mess and needs to be re-written to be more coherent. Here is a coherent paragraph
made of coherent sentences:

I had to walk home from school today. My parents had a business meeting, so I had to take care of
myself. I ordered pizza from Gino’s, its my favorite pizza place because its very close to my home and
has fresh toppings. My dad hates pineapple on pizza. However, since my parents would have lunch at
the meeting, I would not have to share my pizza, so I chose pineapple as a topping.

Hello ,

Empty phrases is definitely another concept that creeps up on a writer. It is definitely a struggle to write
an essay within a hard limit, that is why I appreciate it when professors choose to give me a +/- 250
words boundary. When the essay gets too long you need to shorten it and may have to forfeit a good
argument, and when its too short you start putting in empty phrases to reach the word limit. Here my
example of a sentence with empty phrases:

In order to put on a passionate display of emotions/feelings during a play you must put yourself in the
shoes of the character and attempt to live, eat, sleep, and breathe like the character.

Sentence re-written without empty phrases:

To put on a passionate display of emotion during a play, you must connect with your character’s
situation and experience a similar environment.