Texts use linguistic glue as well as logical sense. Cohesion refers to the grammatical and lexical ties that bind elements inside a text—pronouns, conjunctions, repetition, ellipsis, and the like.

Classic inventories include reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. These devices help readers track participants and relations across sentence boundaries. Cohesion can be counted more objectively than coherence.

Heavy explicit cohesion can make prose cumbersome; sparse cohesion can leave readers stranded. Teachers work on cohesive devices when moving learners from sentence accuracy to discourse fluency. Computational tools also track cohesion features as rough indicators of 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