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The Golden Rule of Essay Writing:

The Principle of Cohesion

     The Principle of Cohesion is the golden rule for any paper you write, no matter the genre. Something is cohesive when all the parts fit together in such a way that they form a single whole. Cohesion is what makes a paper a paper, instead of just a collection of semi-related ideas or facts, or a list of bullet points in paragraph form.

 

     A paper becomes a cohesive whole when everything is centered around a single Main Point. In academic writing, we call this the THESIS. Every single part of your paper – every idea or fact you mention, every detail or description you include, every paragraph you write – needs to contribute to this thesis. The thesis is the heart of your paper; everything else must be centered around it and in service to it. 

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In practice, the Principle of Cohesion means THREE main things:

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Most of the guidelines on this website are designed to help you create a cohesive paper.

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1) You need to know what the thesis is! What is the main point which you want to communicate to your reader? This is the fundamental step: if there is no main point, there is no way to unify your ideas.

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2) You need to be strategic with what you include in your essay, and only include things that help the main point. You need to be aware of what each part of your paper is doing, and how it is contributing to the thesis.

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3) You need to be strategic with how you present your ideas. This includes the structure of your essay (the order in which you present ideas) and your transition and topic sentences (the way you express the connections between ideas). 

The Principle of Cohesion in Five Questions

There are five main questions to ask yourself about any paper you write:

  1. About the paper as a whole: What is my main point?

  2. About each part of the paper: is this helping my main point?

  3. About each part of the paper you answered “yes” to: how is this helping my main point?

  4. About the organization of your paper: in what order do I need to explain or mention ideas?

  5. About the beginnings and ends of paragraphs: how can I make clear to the reader how these individual ideas connect to one another and contribute to the thesis?

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