i) The simplest way of disorganizing a chapter is to
under-organize it, 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 headings for the lead-in and lead-out materials virtually guarantees this outcome. It is very common to find a chapter (lets 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 percent) 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
overorganize a
chapter by having toomany 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 word
chapter into AUTHORING AP H DShare with your friends: 
