Style, Sentence Craft and Coherence: every key term you need (+ practice quiz)
25 flashcard terms for College Writing & Rhetoric Topic 7, written to match the course framework. Study them here, then drill them as interactive flashcards, or test yourself with the 15-question quiz — free, no account needed.
The guideline that main characters should appear as grammatical subjects and their important actions as verbs. Most sentences readers call dense improve immediately when this alignment is restored.
Nominalisation
A noun formed from a verb or adjective, such as evaluation from evaluate. Chains of them bury the action of a sentence and are the single most common source of stodgy academic prose.
Agentless passive
A passive construction that omits the doer entirely. It is useful when the agent is unknown or irrelevant and evasive when the writer is avoiding saying who acted.
Topic position
The opening of a sentence, where readers expect familiar material that links back to what they already know. Consistent topic choices are what make a paragraph feel like it is about something.
Stress position
The end of a sentence, where readers place the greatest emphasis and remember most. Putting the newest or most important information there is the cheapest available upgrade to a draft.
Old-to-new flow
Beginning sentences with information already introduced and ending with new information that the next sentence can pick up. Violating it produces prose that is grammatical yet exhausting.
Cohesion
The sentence-level linkage created by repeated key terms, pronouns, and connectives that lets a reader move from one sentence to the next without effort.
Coherence
The whole-passage sense that parts belong together under a governing idea. A passage can be locally cohesive yet incoherent if its sentences never add up to a point.
Given-new contract
The tacit agreement that a writer will ground each new statement in something the reader already holds. Broken repeatedly, it forces readers to reread rather than advance.
Paragraph point sentence
The sentence, usually early, stating the claim the paragraph will defend. Readers use it to predict what follows, so a paragraph that wanders from it reads as disorganised.
Parallelism
Matching grammatical form across items in a series or in paired clauses. It reduces processing effort and makes conceptual symmetry audible to the reader.
Faulty parallelism
A mismatch of grammatical form within a series, such as pairing a noun phrase with a clause. Readers may not name the error but they feel the sentence stumble.
Subordination
Placing lesser material in dependent clauses so the main clause carries the point. It is how a writer signals relative importance without adding evaluative words.
Coordination
Joining elements of equal weight with connectors such as and, but, or yet. Overusing it flattens an argument by presenting subordinate detail as if it were equally important.
Cumulative sentence
A sentence that states its main clause first and then extends through modifying phrases. It reads as natural and exploratory, adding detail after the reader has the frame.
Periodic sentence
A sentence that withholds its main clause until the end, building suspense through preceding elements. Used sparingly it lands emphasis; used often it tires the reader.
Sentence rhythm variation
Deliberately mixing short and long sentences so that emphasis falls where the argument needs it. Uniform sentence length is the reason some technically correct prose feels monotonous.
Concision
Removing words that add no meaning, including empty openers, redundant pairs, and metadiscourse about what the writer is about to do. Concision is a matter of density, not of shortness.
Metadiscourse
Language about the discourse itself, such as it should be noted that or this essay will show. A small amount guides readers; a large amount displaces the content it announces.
Hedging and boosting
Calibrating certainty with words such as suggests or demonstrates. Matching the level of confidence to the strength of the evidence is a hallmark of mature academic prose.
Diction precision
Choosing the word whose meaning exactly fits, rather than a longer near-synonym. Inflated vocabulary reads as insecurity and often smuggles in a meaning the writer did not intend.
Jargon versus technical term
A technical term names a concept precisely for readers who share the field, while jargon uses insider vocabulary where a plain word would serve. The test is whether replacement would lose meaning.
Transitional signal
A word or phrase marking the logical relation between sentences, such as contrast, consequence, or concession. Correct signals let readers follow an argument without reconstructing it.
Sentence-level emphasis by inversion
Reordering elements so a normally buried item lands at the point of stress. It is a deliberate departure from ordinary order and loses force if repeated too often.
Reading aloud as a style check
Testing prose by ear to catch tangles, missing words, and misplaced emphasis that silent reading skips. It detects rhythm problems no checklist reliably finds.