Abstract
To determine how certain cohesion elements - the given-new contract, pronouns, synonyms, and topic sentences - affect the readability of technical paragraphs, six alternative paragraphs were composed, two ″models″ and four other carefully varied to feature the four factors under consideration. Then each passage was tested for its readability when subjects were administered a cloze procedure and a recall exercise for each paragraph. The results show that violations of the given-new contract make technical paragraphs more difficult to read; that changing repeated words to pronouns makes passages more difficult to follow; that using synonyms (instead of repetitions) makes prose harder to read; and that deleting a topic sentence may impede a reader's comprehension.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages | 285-300 |
Number of pages | 16 |
Volume | 12 |
No | 4 |
Specialist publication | Journal of Technical Writing and Communication |
State | Published - Jan 1 1982 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Communication
- Education