Short answer: Coherence and Cohesion is 25% of your Writing band and it marks two different things — whether your ideas are in an order a reader can follow (coherence) and whether your sentences are joined so the connections are visible (cohesion).
The band 7 line is not a stock of connectives. It is one clear central topic per paragraph, logically sequenced, with cohesive devices used well enough to go unnoticed. Adding more "Moreover" is the standard repair and it usually moves the band down.
That last point is not an opinion.
The official Task 2 descriptors put over-use at the bottom of the scale, not the top: band 5 is described as making "inadequate, inaccurate or over-use of cohesive devices", and band 6 as using them effectively but with cohesion that "may be faulty or mechanical".
A candidate who opens every paragraph with a connective is writing that description of themselves.
What coherence and cohesion actually mean
| Half | The question the examiner is answering | Where it shows up |
|---|---|---|
| Coherence | Do the ideas progress in an order that makes sense without the reader reconstructing it? | Paragraphing, topic sentences, the order of your body paragraphs, whether each paragraph has one job |
| Cohesion | Are the links between sentences and paragraphs signalled accurately? | Connectives, referencing (this / these / such / the latter), substitution, repetition of key nouns, punctuation |
Candidates study the second half and lose marks on the first. An essay can have a connective in every sentence and still be incoherent, because the paragraphs do two things at once, or the second body paragraph repeats the first with new examples.
The band ladder, in plain English
This is the official descriptor set rewritten as what an examiner sees on the page. The wording in quotation marks is from the public Task 2 descriptors; the rest is the practical read.
| Band | Descriptor, in short | What that looks like |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | Some organisation but "a lack of overall progression"; "inadequate, inaccurate or over-use of cohesive devices"; does not write in paragraphs, or paragraphing is inadequate | One long block, or paragraphs that break at random. Ideas arrive in the order they occurred to the writer. |
| 6 | Information arranged coherently with clear overall progression; devices used effectively, but cohesion within or between sentences "may be faulty or mechanical"; "uses paragraphing, but not always logically" | Four paragraphs, a connective opening each one, and a body paragraph that changes topic halfway through without warning. |
| 7 | "Logically organises information and ideas" with "clear progression throughout"; a range of devices used appropriately though with some under- or over-use; "presents a clear central topic within each paragraph" | Each paragraph has one topic and develops it. The reader never has to go back a sentence. |
| 8 | "Sequences information and ideas logically"; "manages all aspects of cohesion well"; "uses paragraphing sufficiently and appropriately" | The links stop being visible as technique. You could delete half the connectives and the essay would still read in order. |
Read the band 8 row twice. The highest band is described by cohesion being well managed, not heavily signposted. At the top of the scale the joins disappear into the prose. This is the opposite of what most preparation teaches.
Why adding linking words lowers the band
Three failure modes account for nearly every mechanical-cohesion penalty, and all three come from treating connectives as decoration rather than as claims about the relationship between two ideas.
| Failure | Example | Why it is penalised |
|---|---|---|
| Wrong relationship | "Air quality has worsened. Moreover, traffic has doubled." | Traffic doubling is the cause, not an additional point. The connective states a relationship the sentences do not have. |
| Over-use | "Firstly… Moreover… In addition… Furthermore… Finally…" opening five consecutive sentences | Signposting every sentence is the band 6 "mechanical" note. It also signals that the progression is a list rather than an argument. |
| Register mismatch | "Last but not least" / "In a nutshell" in an academic essay | Reads as memorised phrasebook language. It also draws attention from Lexical Resource, so one habit is charged on two criteria. |
The working rule: use a connective only when the relationship would be ambiguous without it. Contrast and concession usually need one. Addition almost never does — if the next sentence is on the same topic, the reader already assumes addition.
Paragraphing decides more of your band than connectives do
Paragraphing appears at every band on the scale, which tells you how much of the criterion it carries. The band 7 requirement is a paragraph with one central topic, developed. Two topics in a paragraph is the most common band 6 script we see.
- One paragraph, one claim. If you can write two different topic sentences for the same paragraph, it is two paragraphs.
- Topic sentence first. Not an example, not a statistic — the claim that the rest of the paragraph supports.
- Four to five paragraphs for Task 2. Introduction, two bodies, conclusion is the reliable shape; a third body is fine if each still has one job. This is our guidance, not an official rule — the descriptors specify sufficient paragraphing, not a number.
- Do not paragraph by length. Breaking a long paragraph in half to make the page look better produces a second paragraph with no topic sentence, which is a coherence loss, not a gain.
The full paragraph blueprint per essay type — what each sentence is for, in order — is in our Task 2 structure guide, and the Band 8 Trainer marks one paragraph at a time against exactly that blueprint.
Referencing and substitution: the band 7 device nobody drills
Cohesion is not only connectives. Most of the joining work in good academic prose is done by pointing backwards, and it is the single fastest upgrade available to a band 6 script.
| Device | Used for | Example | The error to avoid |
|---|---|---|---|
| this / these + noun | Summarising the previous sentence into a noun | "…governments subsidise public transport. This policy reduces congestion…" | Bare "This reduces congestion" — an unanchored pronoun is a cohesion fault, and it is very common. |
| such + noun | Referring to a category just described | "Such measures are rarely popular." | Using it where nothing plural or categorical preceded. |
| the former / the latter | Two items already named, in order | "…fines and education campaigns. The latter is cheaper." | Using it with three items, or reversing the order. Both are accuracy errors. |
| do so / does this | Substituting for a verb phrase | "Cities that restrict cars do so at a political cost." | Substituting when the original verb phrase is more than a line back. |
| Controlled repetition | Keeping one key noun visible across a paragraph | "congestion… congestion charging… the charge" | Replacing every instance with a synonym, which makes the reader track four words for one idea. |
That last row is worth isolating, because it is where two criteria pull against each other.
Lexical Resource rewards range, so candidates synonym-swap the topic noun every time it appears — and Coherence suffers, because a reader has to work out that "vehicle levy", "road pricing" and "the toll" are the same thing. Keep the key term stable and vary the language around it.
Which swaps are safe and which change meaning is the subject of the synonym upgrade table.
The first-sentence audit
This takes ninety seconds and finds most coherence problems in your own writing, which is otherwise almost impossible to see — you already know what you meant.
- Read only the first sentence of each paragraph, in order, skipping everything else.
- If those four or five sentences read as a coherent summary of an argument, your progression is sound.
- If one of them is an example, a statistic or a connective with no claim attached, that paragraph has no topic sentence — write one.
- If two of them make the same claim in different words, you have one body paragraph's worth of content spread over two. Merge them and develop a genuinely different second point.
- If the order of the claims could be swapped with no loss, ask whether the second paragraph really builds on the first. "Clear progression" in the band 7 descriptor means the order carries meaning.
Five repairs, in the order they pay
- Delete half your connectives. Read the essay without them. Restore only the ones whose absence makes a relationship ambiguous. This alone moves a mechanical band 6 script.
- Give every paragraph a topic sentence that makes a claim, not an announcement ("This essay will discuss…" is not a topic sentence).
- Anchor every "this". Add the noun: this trend, this approach, this restriction.
- Fix one-paragraph-two-topics. The commonest single coherence fault, and the one that caps band 6 scripts.
- Stop synonym-swapping the key noun. Pick the term and keep it.
Coherence is the hardest criterion to self-assess, because your own argument always looks ordered to you.
If you want to know whether this is the criterion holding your band down — rather than Task Response, which produces very similar-looking scores — the Writing Checker reports Coherence and Cohesion as its own band alongside the other three, so you can see which one is actually the ceiling before you spend a month on the wrong thing.