Texts use linguistic glue as well as logical sense. Cohesion refers to the grammatical and lexical ties that link elements within a text, such as pronouns, conjunctions, repetition, and ellipsis.

Halliday and Hasan’s classic inventory includes reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. These devices help readers track participants and relations across sentence boundaries. Cohesion can be measured relatively objectively; coherence cannot.

Overuse of explicit cohesive markers can make prose heavy; underuse can leave readers stranded. Language teachers work on cohesive devices when moving learners from sentence-level accuracy to discourse-level fluency. Computational tools also detect cohesion features as proxies for text quality.

• Linguistic linking devices within a text
• Includes reference, conjunction, and lexical ties
• Supports but does not guarantee coherence
• Taught in advanced writing and discourse courses