What is the term for the capacity of a text to make sense?

What is the term for the capacity of a text to make sense?

• A. Coherence
• B. Cohesion
• C. Structure
• D. Style

Answer: (A)

Coherence describes how well a text hangs together so that its ideas form a meaningful, unified whole. It’s about the big-picture clarity: the sequence of ideas, how they connect, and the overall message or argument making sense to the reader. You can have good cohesion—clear links from sentence to sentence—without strong coherence if the ideas don’t fit into a clear overarching plan. Conversely, a text can present coherent ideas even if the surface linking is minimal, though transitions and repeating key terms often help maintain coherence. Structure is about the arrangement of parts (like introduction, body, conclusion), and style is the writer’s voice and choices. In this item, the term that best captures the capacity of a text to make sense is coherence.