Hypertext Coherence 1

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= There is a price to be paid for the flexibility of hypertext: the loss of unique (often called linear) default sequentiality, which is a typical given that many strategies of cohesion and coherence build on;

= Even if we do not read a text in linear order, there is a linear order to which reference can be made and on which other forms of order can build (or parasitize?), and moreover this order is a unique one: there is only one default path through any text unit from the preceding to the following unit on the same scale; every text-unit in its co-text context has a definite pre-text and post-text, and it divides the textual universe into exactly two parts: "above" and "below".

= In hypertext, there are typically multiple pathways through any text unit, and a text-unit may be encountered in a sequentially indeterminate order relative to all other text-units if it is accessed because of its membership in some SET of, say, thematically related (co-thematic) units, and not because of its role in some STRUCTURE; imagine that all the clauses containing members of the same lexical cohesion chain were arrayed alphabetically on a page, or that we clicked on one to move to the next; there would still be some degree of semantic unity, but certainly not cohesive text.