Authoring a PhD Thesis How to Plan, Draft, Write and Finish a Doctoral Dissertation by Patrick Dunleavy

12 sections, and have three or four second-order subheadings in
each section, plus a scattering of third-order subheads as well,
then readers will encounter 40 headings in total, effectively
one every 250 words, or two per page. If the headings look alike
(using similar fonts and occupying the same positions on the
page) then confusion is guaranteed.
Text that has been overfragmented in this way often comes
with a complicated numbering system that is supposed to pro-
vide guidance for readers. All modern word-processing packages
have ‘outliner’ facilities which allow you to automatically
create a numbered set of paragraphs in many different formats,
often with varying levels of indentation as well. These features
are mainly designed for use in short reports. The outlining
facility can also be useful for making conventional notes when
ploughing through a very hierarchic textbook or a similar
source. After using this facility for these purposes in their ear-
lier studies, quite a lot of doctoral students also adopt it for
authoring large amounts of text. But applied over a very long
text like a doctorate an outliner approach can often be counter-
productive and seem like overkill.
In many technical or more mathematical disciplines the
number sequence commonly adopted might look like this:

ORGANIZING A CHAPTER OR PAPER◆ 81

5.A First-order heading

5.A.i Second-order heading

5.A.ii Another second-order heading

5.A.ii.a Third-order subheading

5.A.ii.a Another third-order subheading

5.1 First-order heading

5.1.1 Second-order heading

5.1.2 Another second-order heading

5.1.2.1 Third-order subheading

5.1.2.2 Another third-order subheading

Alternatively in humanities subjects the same effect is often
achieved by mixed-together different letter and number sequences
such as this: