The use of "in consonance with" as a synonyms to "according" and "according to"

Question

I am doing an academic work in English for the first time and just need to use a lot of synonyms to agree with the assumptions of the literature (e.g., according, according to, as reported by, conforming to, in agreement with). Until now, the most used throughout the text were "according" and "according to".

I was in doubtful if the term "in consonance with" (in the example of the sentence below) would be a good synonym for replacing these terms or it would be weird. I've never seen "in consonance with" used like this before.

"(...) as increasing the degree of sensitivity increasing to the highest values of the index, in consonance with to the degree of exposure to wave and tidal energy".

Could someone please weigh in on this?

Answer 1

"Consonance" is certainly a word, but not one that is frequently used. Dictionaries often give incomplete or misleading definitions, so, in general, it's best to stick with words that you have seen other people use, and to read a great deal so you see many more "academic" words used in context. This is no different from how native speakers should approach learning new vocabulary.

As with any language, English words not only have meaning but also etymology and nuance. "Consonance", for example, has the prefix "con" meaning "together" or "with" (congruent, confluence, congregate, etc.) combined with the root "son" meaning "sound" (dissonance, sonic, sonorous). It therefore literally means "harmony of sound", and only figuratively implies your intended meaning.

There are many other synonyms of "accord" you might try: akin, concordant, analogous, coincident, comparable, congruous, correspondent, commensurate, proportionate and many others. Each has its own nuance, so it really depends on what exactly you want to say.