[Tex/LaTex] Creating unnumbered parts/chapters/sections (plus adding them to the ToC and/or header)

header-footernumberingsectioningstarred-versiontable of contents

I'm using the report document class for a thesis, and I need to add things like "Acknowledgements" and an "Introduction". I noticed that there is an \abstract command which would have been wonderful if applied similarly. How do I add these without messing up the chapters' numbering while being picked up by the ToC in proper order and page numbering?

Best Answer

To get unnumbered chapters, parts, sections, subsections, etc, you just affix a * (asterisk) to the respective sectioning command; hence, you'd type something like

\section*{Acknowledgments}

or

\chapter*{Introduction}

Exactly which sectioning command you ought to use will depend importantly on aspects of the document that you haven't told us about. E.g., should the respective parts begin on a page of their own, and how prominent do you want the caption of the sectioning command to be?

Note that unnumbered parts, chapters, sections, etc are not included automatically in the table of contents (ToC). In case you need some (or all) of them to be included, you should insert an \addcontentsline instruction after each such sectioning command. For example, you'd type:

\chapter*{Foreword} 
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Foreword}

The second argument of the \addcontentsline instruction -- here, chapter -- instructs LaTeX to typeset the entry in a given style, here, "chapter style".

The following MWE

\documentclass{report}
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\chapter*{Acknowledgments}
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Acknowledgments}
\chapter*{Introduction}
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Introduction}
\chapter{Experiments}
\chapter{Conclusion}
\end{document}

generates this ToC:

enter image description here

Related Question