Authoring a PhD

signposts
provide a minimal indication of the sequence
of main sections to come in the chapter. When you drive down
a highway, the signposts say ‘London’ or ‘New York’ to show
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where you are going. But they do not provide any detailed pre-
figuring of what you can find in these places. A signpost is not 
a guidebook. For the same reason, signposts in your text need to
be kept fairly terse and under control. Readers must be given 
a very clear idea of how many sections there are in the chapter,
and what sequence they come up in. You can include a phrase
or two, perhaps a whole sentence, to very briefly characterize the
subtopics considered in each section. But you must not blurt out
what you will say in later sections or give a condensed summary
of the chapter argument to come. If you do succumb to the
temptation to write a mini-guidebook to future sections you will
probably state your argument in too crude or vulgar a way now,
and create an unwelcome sense of repetition for readers later on.
Signposts can be implemented in a more explicit or a more
latent fashion. Explicit signposts should preferably use textual
ways of conveying the sequence (‘First, I consider …’, ‘Second,
I examine …’). It is best to avoid referring to the section num-
bers directly (‘Section 3.1 discusses …’) because this approach
can make your signposting look too mechanical. It may then
seem to readers as if you are just duplicating the headings
themselves. More latent ways of signposting are briefer, simply
signalling a sequence of subjects to come in the chapter, with-
out linking them precisely to particular numbered sections.
Starting and finishing a section
The beginning of each of the main sections of the chapter also
needs to be carefully written. Main sections generally should be
numbered (2.1, 2.2, etc.) and have a short heading, probably
around four to eight words. Section headings should be short
and punchy. (The only exception concerns a ‘narrative subhead-
ing’ strategy where the headings are full-sentence descriptions
that précis the section contents.) Do not use colons or partitions
in subsection headings, which would make them too cumber-
some. It is important not to repeat either the thesis title 
or
the
chapter title, both of which automatically frame what the sec-
tion is about. Again, it is best to avoid interrogative headings.
Instead try to get some of your storyline or substantive argument
into each section heading.
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Next you will need no more than one or two paragraphs of
lead-in material. Ideally this should start in a somewhat higher
impact way than normal text. Again a quotation can be used,
or a very short empirical example or a smaller intellectual puz-
zle (one that will be wholly resolved within this section). But a
section start must always be accomplished much more speedily
and simply than that for a whole chapter. In longer or more
complex sections you might need to end the lead-in paragraph
with some low-key signposts setting out the rough sequence of
topics that will be handled (within this section alone). Within-
section signposts should always be briefer and less formal than
those for the chapter as a whole. If they are not, there is a risk
that readers may get confused, especially at the start of the chap-
ter where they will encounter chapter signposts for the main
sections at the end of the introduction, and then come across
within-section signposts for the first section perhaps only one or
two paragraphs later. It is important to ensure that readers do
not run into different ‘first, second, third’ lists close to each
other, which might be confusing.
Concluding a section is also difficult and worth doing care-
fully. You will need a last paragraph for each section that 
terminates it in a way that looks logical, well organized, and
cumulative. It is best to avoid ‘telling them what you’ve told
them’ in a mechanical fashion. Instead, the section wrap-up
paragraph should let you step back a little bit and draw out a
brief central message from the section as a whole. This could be
an interim conclusion, or a summary of what the section has
said but perhaps looked at from a different angle. It is impor-
tant that the concluding paragraph for a section stick solely to
what has been done in that section, and not discuss anything
else. However, in the last sentence or so, the concluding para-
graph can make forward linkages to the next section, so that it
too can have a well-designed, higher impact kind of start.