(i) The simplest way of disorganizing a chapter is to under-
organizeit, perhaps including headings but only fake ones that
do no useful work. This effect comes about because authors
often create sections which are much longer or shorter than
others, and then they assign the same order of headings to
these dissimilar pieces of text, thereby mis-signalling readers
and creating inappropriate expectations. Using first-order head-
ings for the lead-in and lead-out materials virtually guarantees
this outcome. It is very common to find a chapter (let’s say,
chapter 4) organized like this:
Several things have gone wrong here. Titling the lead-in and
lead-out materials as if they were main sections will generate
expectations amongst readers that these are substantial bits of
text when they are not. The middle two main sections are real
ones, but they are completely unbalanced. Section 4.3 is eight
times longer than section 4.2 (as well as being 40 times longer
than section 4.1 and 24 times longer than section 4.4). So when
readers encounter a first-order heading here they have no idea
what to expect. It might be a section as short as 300 words or as
long as 12,000 words. These headings will look well worked out
on the thesis contents page, but in fact they do not effectively
chunk up or organize the chapter at all. Virtually all the text
(85 per cent) is actually in section 4.3, which at this length will
be impossible for readers to follow or for the author to organize
effectively.
(ii) It is also possible to overorganizea chapter by having too
many levels of headings; making them too similar in their
font size, appearance, and location; and then overnumbering
them. For instance, if you split up a 10,000-word chapter into
80 ◆AUTHORING A PHD
4.1 Introduction [first-order heading]
300 words
4.2 First main section [first-order heading]
1500 words
4.3 Second main section [first-order heading]
12,000 words
4.4 Conclusions [first-order heading]
500 words