
#COHERENCE VS COHESION SOFTWARE#
Structured Design, cohesion and coupling were published in the article Stevens, Myers & Constantine (1974) and the book Yourdon & Constantine (1979) the latter two subsequently became standard terms in software engineering. The software metrics of coupling and cohesion were invented by Larry Constantine in the late 1960s as part of Structured Design, based on characteristics of “good” programming practices that reduced maintenance and modification costs. High cohesion often correlates with loose coupling, and vice versa. In contrast, low cohesion is associated with undesirable traits such as being difficult to maintain, test, reuse, or even understand.Ĭohesion is often contrasted with coupling, a different concept. Modules with high cohesion tend to be preferable, because high cohesion is associated with several desirable traits of software including robustness, reliability, reusability, and understandability. In another sense, it is a measure of the strength of relationship between the class's methods and data themselves.Ĭohesion is an ordinal type of measurement and is usually described as “high cohesion” or “low cohesion”. In one sense, it is a measure of the strength of relationship between the methods and data of a class and some unifying purpose or concept served by that class. In computer programming, cohesion refers to the degree to which the elements inside a module belong together.

These they called: Reference, Substitution, Ellipsis, Lexical Chains, Cohesive Nouns and Conjunction.Degree to which elements within a module belong together According to the writers Halliday and Hasan (1976), there are six main ways that cohesion is created in a text.
#COHERENCE VS COHESION HOW TO#
To achieve good cohesion, you need to know how to use "cohesive devices", which are certain words or phrases that serve the purpose of connecting two statements. Establishing connections between sentences, sections, and even paragraphs using synonyms, adverbials, conjunctions etc. In short, the links that stick different sentences and make the text meaningful can be thought of as cohesion in the text. It is the grammatical and lexical linking within a text or sentence that holds a text together and gives it meaning. Coherence refers to the semantic unity created between the ideas, sentences, paragraphs and sections of a piece of writing.Ĭohesion represents the grammatical and lexical relationship between different elements of a text which hold it together. Rather than the text appearing linked together perfectly, it is the overall impression of the text that appears to be smooth and clear. If the readers can follow and understand a text easily, it obviously has coherence. When the text begins to make sense on the whole, it is said to be coherent.

It is a quality of a piece of text that makes it meaningful in the minds of the readers. Coherence is based more on the logic of the ideas and how they are presented rather than on the language that is used to express these ideas. When writing an essay, coherence involves such features as: summarizing the overall argument of an essay in the introductory paragraph presenting ideas in a logical sequence putting separate, major points into separate paragraphs and beginning each paragraph with a 'topic sentence', following by supporting sentences. The cohesion of writing, on the other hand, focuses on the “grammatical” aspects of writing.Ĭoherence is a “reasonable connection or relation between ideas, arguments, statements, etc.” It means the overall "understandability" of what you write or say.

thesis statement development), synthesizing and integrating readings, organizing and clarifying ideas.

On the one hand, coherence refers to the “rhetorical” aspects of your writing, which include developing and supporting your argument (e.g. While c oherence means the connection of ideas at the idea level, cohesion means the connection of ideas at the sentence level. Cohesion refers to connectivity in a text, but coherence refers to how easy it is to understand the writing. A text is cohesive if its elements are linked together. Cohesion and coherence are two different things.
