[Tex/LaTex] Changing the position of the Chapter heading

chaptersformattingsectioning

I am trying to alter the chapter heading that is preset in the book template. I have found a style I like from Vincent Zoonekynd’s web-page, http://zoonek.free.fr/LaTeX/LaTeX_samples_chapter/0.html, however it has a large gap above the chapter heading and I cannot work out how to reduce this. My code is,

\documentclass[11pt, oneside]{book}   

\makeatletter
\def\thickhrulefill{\leavevmode \leaders \hrule height ex \hfill \kern \z@}
\def\@makechapterhead#1{%
\vspace*{5\p@}%
{\parindent \z@ 
{\raggedleft \reset@font
  \scshape \@chapapp{} \thechapter\par\nobreak}%
\par\nobreak
\vspace*{10\p@}
\interlinepenalty\@M
{\raggedright \Huge \bfseries #1}%
\par\nobreak
\hrulefill
\par\nobreak
\vskip 20\p@
 }}
\def\@makeschapterhead#1{%
\vspace*{10\p@}%
{\parindent \z@ 
{\raggedleft \reset@font
  \scshape \vphantom{\@chapapp{} \thechapter}\par\nobreak}%
\par\nobreak
\vspace*{30\p@}
\interlinepenalty\@M
{\raggedright \Huge \bfseries #1}%
\par\nobreak
\hrulefill
\par\nobreak
\vskip 10\p@
 }}

enter image description here

Can anyone help me reduce the white space above this?

Using the show frame package this is what my document looks like

enter image description here

Best Answer

A simple code with titlesec. You can play with \titlespacing: the first argument increases the left margin, the second is vertical space before the heading, and the third, vertical space after the heading.

\documentclass[11pt, oneside]{book}
\usepackage{showframe}

 \usepackage{titlesec}
 \titleformat{\chapter}[display]{}{\filleft\scshape\chaptername\enspace\thechapter}{-2pt}{\filright \Huge \bfseries}[\vskip4.5pt\titlerule]
 \titleformat{name=\chapter, numberless}[block]{}{}{0pt}{\filright \Huge \bfseries}[\vskip4.5pt\titlerule]

 \titlespacing{\chapter}{0pt}{-15pt}{25.5pt}
 \titlespacing{name=\chapter, numberless}{0pt}{16pt}{15pt}

 \begin{document}

 \chapter*{Introduction}

 \section{Intended Application of Particles}

 \end{document}

enter image description here

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Changing the chapter heading size in quotchap

quotchap uses this command to specify the size of the chapter heading:

\let\size@chapter\huge

In your document, after loading quotchap, you could to the same but with another font size command, for instance:

\makeatletter
\let\size@chapter\small
\makeatother

You have to write \makeatletter ... \makeatother around the command to be able to use the @ sign in the command name.

If you would like to adjust more than just the size: quotchap calls a macro \sectfont that may be redefined to switch to a certain font family, shape or weight. For instance, regarding Levs answer concerning a condensed version, using condensed Helvetica could be done by

\usepackage{helvet}% if desired
\renewcommand*{\sectfont}{\sffamily\fontseries{mc}\selectfont}

\sectfont is used automatically for all quotchap chapter headings.

[Tex/LaTex] How to format the chapter heading

Depends on your level of expertise, if you are more comfortable with packages then using titlesec as suggested by Seamus in the comments is a good choice. If you are here to learn a bit more about the innards of LaTeX you can use the code below, which uses the LaTeX @makechapterhead and @makeschapterhead macros (note the make(s) in the latter). The one is used to handle the normal version of chapter and the other the starred version. It is good practice to update both of them when you are developing or modifying a class. The code can be found in book.cls.

enter image description here

\documentclass[oneside]{book}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\makeatletter
\def\thickhrule{\leavevmode \leaders \hrule height 1ex \hfill \kern \z@}
\def\position{\centering}
%% Note the difference between the commands the one is 
%% make and the other one is makes
\renewcommand{\@makechapterhead}[1]{%
  \vspace*{10\p@}%
  {\parindent \z@ \position \reset@font
        {\Huge \scshape  \thechapter }
        \par\nobreak
        \vspace*{10\p@}%
        \interlinepenalty\@M
        \thickhrule
        \par\nobreak
        \vspace*{2\p@}%
        {\Huge \bfseries #1\par\nobreak}
        \par\nobreak
        \vspace*{2\p@}%
        \thickhrule
    \vskip 40\p@
    \vskip 100\p@
  }}

%% This uses makes

\def\@makeschapterhead#1{%
  \vspace*{10\p@}%
  {\parindent \z@ \position \reset@font
        {\Huge \scshape \vphantom{\thechapter}}
        \par\nobreak
        \vspace*{10\p@}%
        \interlinepenalty\@M
        \thickhrule
        \par\nobreak
        \vspace*{2\p@}%
        {\Huge \bfseries #1\par\nobreak}
        \par\nobreak
        \vspace*{2\p@}%
        \thickhrule
    \vskip 100\p@
  }}
\begin{document}
\chapter{The Real Numbers}
\lipsum[1-2]
\chapter*{The Imaginary Numbers}
\lipsum[1-2]
\end{document}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Changing the chapter heading size in quotchap

[Tex/LaTex] How to format the chapter heading

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