Paragraph Coherence

Consider the following paragraph:

 (1) It seems impossible for television programs to give anything but a falsely romantic account of doctors’ lives. (2) Currently there are four medical dramas on prime-time TV. (3) These programs are immensely popular, but only a fool would mistake their heroes for the typical real-life physicians. (4) It serves no purpose—except for possibly the purposes of greedy sponsors—to indulge in this distortion. (5) A doctor on the screen is always well-meaning, handsome and self-sacrificing. (6) He (rarely she) also has plenty of free time to solve other people’s intimate, nonmedical problems. (7) Real doctors must wince with envy—that is, if they are not too exhausted to watch the program at all. (8) Perhaps the most unrealistic point is that the television doctor always happens to have only one patient to care for during each episode of the show.

Here are the makings of a fine paragraph, developing one general point through a set of definite observations. Everything marches briskly along in the first three sentences. If you reread sentences 3, 4 and 5, however, you’ll see that number 4 constitutes an interruption. The writer was about to detail the ways in which TV doctors are unrealistic, but first he threw in an extra remark about the purposes of greedy sponsors. Sentence 7, too, interrupts a logical sequence running from 3 through 8. Once these elements of disunity were pointed out, the writer chose to discard sentence 4 and to move sentence 7 to the end. Try reading the paragraph this way and you’ll sense the value of continuous and logical development.

It seems impossible for television programs to give anything but a falsely romantic account of doctors’ lives. Currently there are four medical dramas on prime-time TV. These programs are immensely popular, but only a fool would mistake their heroes for the typical real-life physicians. A doctor on the screen is always well-meaning, handsome and self-sacrificing. He (rarely she) also has plenty of free time to solve other people’s intimate, nonmedical problems. Perhaps the most unrealistic point is that the television doctor always happens to have only one patient to care for during each episode of the show. Real doctors must wince with envy—that is, if they are not too exhausted to watch the program at all.

Supply one sample paragraph from your own writing. Choose one you think is rather good, one you think is coherent. Then answer the following questions:

1)      What is the topic sentence of the paragraph?

2)      What details support the topic sentence?

3)      What consistent order do these details follow?

4)      What key terms are repeated or referred to by pronouns?

5)      What transitions are used?

6)      What are the clearest evidences of coherence within this paragraph?

7)      What (if anything) could be done to make the coherence stronger?