[Tex/LaTex] Formatting a thesis summary chapter

Question

I'm trying to format my thesis summary title, but the result is not very appealing. Here's the code:

\chapter*{\parbox{\linewidth}{\centering A very long thesis title about some very important stuff and a bit longer and a little more longer}}
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Summary}
\begin{center}
    John Smith

    \large Summary
\end{center}
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

I'm using the report documentclass. And the result is:

Doesn't look too bad, but the spacing between name and title is a bit too much. Can I somehow reduce that spacing for only this chapter?

Or alternatively, is there a better way to make a summary chapter?

Answer 1

You can add the name and the subtitle to the \chapter* command; adjust the dimensions in the definition of \summary until you're satisfied.

\documentclass{report}
\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{letterpaper,margin=1in}
\usepackage{newtxtext}

\newcommand{\summary}[2]{%
  \chapter*{%
    \parbox{\textwidth}{%
      \centering
      #1\\[1.5ex]% the title and the separation
      \normalfont\normalsize
      #2\\[2ex]% the author and the separation
      \large Summary
    }%
  }%
  \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Summary}%
}

\begin{document}

\summary{A very long thesis title about some very important stuff
         and a bit longer and a little more longer}
        {John Smith}

Some text follows

\end{document}