chaptersreportsectioningspacing
If all I want to do is to tweak the vertical space before one particular chapter title, can I somehow do it in a quick way without redefining much?
I tried the following and it didn't work:
\documentclass{report}
\begin{document}
\vspace*{-3cm}
\chapter{My chapter}
\end{document}
Werner answered the questions for the standard classes. If you use scrbook or scrreprt (KOMA-script) the space before and after the chapter title is given by \chapterheadstartvskip and \chapterheadendvskip. These "lengths" are not defined as lengths, but as commands instead. To change the settings you must use renewcommand:
\renewcommand*{\chapterheadstartvskip}{\vspace*{1cm}}
\renewcommand*{\chapterheadendvskip}{\vspace{2cm}}
With KOMA-script version 3.16, a new interface was introduced to change the appearance of sectioning commands, including chapters. You can now do something like this
\RedeclareSectionCommand[beforeskip=0pt,
afterskip=2cm]{chapter}
verbatim uses trivlist which adds above and below it the current values of \topsep and \partopsep (the latter if at the beginning of a paragraph); since the trivlist is started when a group has already been opened by verbatim, it's safe to set locally the values: the command to patch is \@verbatim, that starts with \trivlist, so we can set the parameters just before this command:
\usepackage{etoolbox}
\makeatletter
\preto{\@verbatim}{\topsep=0pt \partopsep=0pt }
\makeatother
Here's an example, where I put two minipage environments next to each other just to show the line spacing:
\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{etoolbox}
\makeatletter
\preto{\@verbatim}{\topsep=0pt \partopsep=0pt }
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\begin{minipage}{5cm}
text before verbatim
\begin{verbatim}
some verbatim text
\end{verbatim}
text after verbatim
\end{minipage}%
\begin{minipage}{5cm}
abc\\
def\\
ghi
\end{minipage}
\end{document}
Best Answer
\chapterissues a\clearpageto start on a new page, and the insertion of a\vspace*, while necessary, inserts content that is sufficient for the\clearpageto be realised. We can avoid this by issuing the\clearpagemanually and removing this capability from the regular\chaptercommand temporarily:The definition of
\clearpageis restored after\endgroupas it adheres to the scoping rules of a redefinition within a group.