A means of linking two sentences, paragraphs, or indeed thoughts, by means of a repetition of a part of the previous utterance. In the example, ‘John came into the room. He picked up his coat.’ the pronoun ‘he’ functions anaphorically to inform us who picked up the coat. This point can perhaps be seen more clearly when compared to the passive formulation of the same example: ‘John came into the room. The coat was picked up.’ There isn’t anything in the second sentence to connect it to the first, so we have no idea whether or not there is any relationship between John entering the room and the coat being picked up. See also cataphora.