[Tex/LaTex] How to have a blank even page before every chapter

Question

I've started to use Latex to create a book. I feel like I've gotten the basics down, but I am still very much at the beginning of my learning curve. Google has been a great resource, but I have not been able to find the answer to this question.

I would like my chapter to always begin on an odd page, and I would like the even page just before it to be totally blank. No headers on either of these two pages. This seems to be a common format in most books I've looked at.

I am using fancy headers.

So far the best resource I've found is this:

http://www.markschenk.com/tensegrity/latexexplanation.html

The author suggests the following.

% Code for creating empty pages
% No headers on empty pages before new chapter
\makeatletter
\def\cleardoublepage{\clearpage\if@twoside \ifodd\c@page\else
    \hbox{}
    \thispagestyle{plain}
    \newpage
    \if@twocolumn\hbox{}\newpage\fi\fi\fi}
\makeatother \clearpage{\pagestyle{plain}\cleardoublepage}

This works just fine if the previous chapter ends on an odd page, it inserts a blank just like I want. But if the previous chapter ends on an even page, then it simply begins the chapter on the next page(which is odd).

I've tried making a few changes to the above, with limited success. It feels like I am doing a hack to do something that should be fairly easy. But perhaps this is necessary.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Memoir has \cleartorecto and \cleartoverso to insert clear pages until the next recto (or verso) page. It also has the \clearforchapter macro to specify how you want chapters to start.

So I think what you want is provided by Memoir with

\renewcommand{\clearforchapter}{\clearpage~\thispagestyle{cleared}\cleartorecto}