[Tex/LaTex] Set position for \maketitle in article

positioningtitles

I want to create a handout to support a speech I have to give.

Since I am only familiar with the \documentclass{article}, I wrote the following code:

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
\PrerenderUnicode{äöüÄÖÜß}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}

\title{Some title}
\author{A. Uthor}
\date{2.7.2012}
\pagestyle{headings}
\begin{document}    
    \vspace*{-5pt}
    \maketitle

    \subsection*{Text \& Author}
    \begin{itemize}
        \item foobar
    \end{itemize}

\end{document}

What I want is to have the title, author, date etc. directly on the upper edge of the paper. I understand, there will be more elegant ways to solve this, anyway:
This \vspace*{-5pt} generates an empty page before the actual content of my handout.

Why does it, how can I prevent it to do or (which would be best to know) what is the more elegant way?

Best Answer

article class defines the single column version of \maketitle to effectively begin with \newpage You could redefine \maketitle but simpler, for a one-off document is just locally disable \newpage

 \begin{document}    
    \vspace*{-5pt}
    {\let\newpage\relax\maketitle}
\subsection*{Text \& Author}

does what you need

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