[Tex/LaTex] Titlesec and ACM conference format: How to get proper capitalization of sections

acmcapitalizationsectioningtemplatestitlesec

The ACM conference format requires that the first three sections "Catagories and Subject Descriptors", "General Terms" and "Keywords" be special sections with lowercase titles. All other sections should be uppercase. In the sig-alternate document template provided here this special capitalization scheme is implemented by defining the commands \catagories, \terms and \keywords.

\def\keywords{\if@twocolumn
\section*{Keywords}
\else \small
\quotation
\fi}

As soon as I include the titlesec package in my paper, all section titles become lowercase. I can make all section titles uppercase with the following command: \titleformat{\section}{\secfnt\uppercase}{\thesection}{1em}{} where \secfnt is a special section font defined in the ACM template. All sections become uppercase because the definitions of \keywords etc. are just specially defined sections (see above code block).

My question is does anyone know how to implement the special capitalization scheme required by ACM while still useing the tilesec package? Or maybe an alternative way to reduce spaceing between sections without useing tilesec? For refference the way section capitialization is implemented in the .cls template file is:

\def\section{%
     \@startsection{section}{1}{\z@}{-10\p@ \@plus -4\p@ \@minus -2\p@}% GM
    {4\p@}{\baselineskip 14pt\secfnt\@ucheadtrue}%
}

Best Answer

The definition you report states that the spacing before the section title is 10pt, extendable to 14pt and shrinkable to 8pt (the fourth argument to \@startsection) and that the spacing after the title is 4pt (fifth argument).

The negative values in -10\p@ \@plus -4\p@ \@minus -2\p@ tell LaTeX that the following paragraph should not be indented; the positive value in the fifth argument tells that this sectioning level is "displayed" rather than "run in".

So if you want no space after the section title and to reduce the space above you can do something like

\makeatletter
\def\section{%
  \@startsection{section}{1}{\z@}%
    {-6\p@ \@plus -2\p@ \@minus -1\p@}%Caleb Serafy
    {1sp}%Caleb Serafy
    {\baselineskip 14pt\secfnt\@ucheadtrue}%
}
\makeatother

Notice that I didn't say 0pt (or the equivalent 0\p@ or \z@ in a \makeatletter regime) for the fifth argument, but 1sp (the minumum positive length, which is unnoticeable by the naked eye). I've marked the modifications with your name, as did GM when changed the setup in the style sheet.

However, I don't think that the conference organizers will be happy about this, since they provide a stylesheet just to ensure uniform appearance of the papers.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] how to add number to the title of sections and subsection using the titlesec package

You should use \thesection and \thesubsection in the appropriate places; also \MakeUppercase should go in the last argument for \section.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tgtermes,tgheros} % use your preferred ones for the fonts
\usepackage{lipsum} % this is just to produce some text

\usepackage{titlesec}
\titleformat{\section}[block]
  {\fontsize{12}{15}\bfseries\sffamily\filcenter}
  {\thesection}
  {1em}
  {\MakeUppercase}
\titleformat{\subsection}[hang]
  {\fontsize{12}{15}\bfseries\sffamily}
  {\thesubsection}
  {1em}
  {}

\begin{document}

\lipsum[1]

\section{A section title}

\lipsum[2]

\subsection{A subsection title}

\lipsum[3]

\end{document}

enter image description here

[Tex/LaTex] titlesec ToC formatting — capitalization, subsection numbering for sections, title formatting

Here's one way to do it:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage{etoolbox}
\usepackage{titlesec}
\usepackage{titletoc}

\titleformat{\section} % command
[hang]                 % shape
{\normalsize\bfseries} % format
{\thesubsection}       % label
{1em}                  % Spacing between label and title
{\MakeUppercase}       % before code
\titlespacing{\section}% Set the spacing around the title
{0pt}                  % Left
{0pt}                  % Above
{0pt}                  % Below

\newcommand\RegToCEntries{
  \titlecontents{section}[2em]
    {\vspace{12pt}}
    {\normalfont\normalsize\contentslabel[\thecontentslabel.0]{2em}\uppercase}
    {\hspace*{-2em}\uppercase}
    {\titlerule*[.75em]{.}\contentspage}
}
\newcommand\AppToCEntries{
  \titlecontents{section}[0em]
    {\vspace{12pt}}
    {\normalfont\normalsize\contentspush{\MakeUppercase{\appendixname}}%
      \contentslabel{-1em}\hspace{2em}\makebox[1em][l]{--}%
    }
    {\hspace*{-2em}}
    {\titlerule*[.75em]{.}\contentspage}
}
\AtBeginDocument{\RegToCEntries}
\pretocmd{\appendix}{\AppToCEntries}{}{}
\patchcmd{\tableofcontents}
  {\contentsname}
  {\hfill\MakeUppercase{\contentsname}\hfill\null}
  {}
  {}

\titleformat{\subsection} % command
[hang]                 % shape
{\bfseries\normalsize} % format
{\thesubsection}       % label
{1em}                  % Spacing between label and title
{}                     % before code
\titlespacing{\subsection}% Set the spacing around the title
{0pt}                  % Left
{0pt}                  % Above
{0pt}                  % Below

\titleformat{\subsubsection} % command
[runin]                % shape
{\bfseries\normalsize} % format
{\thesubsubsection}    % label
{1em}                % Spacing between label and title
{}                     % before code
[.]                    % after code

\begin{document}

\tableofcontents
\clearpage% just for the example
\blinddocument
\appendix
\section{A test appendix}
\section{Another test appendix}

\end{document}

The result:

Explanation

Center the ToC title.

I used the etoolbox package to patch \tableofcontents:

\patchcmd{\tableofcontents}
  {\contentsname}
  {\hfill\MakeUppercase{\contentsname}\hfill\null}
  {}
  {}

Formatting for section entries.

I defined two commands \RegToCEntries and \AppToCEntries:

\newcommand\RegToCEntries{
  \titlecontents{section}[2em]
    {\vspace{12pt}}
    {\normalfont\normalsize\contentslabel[\thecontentslabel.0]{2em}\uppercase}
    {\hspace*{-2em}\uppercase}
    {\titlerule*[.75em]{.}\contentspage}
}
\newcommand\AppToCEntries{
  \titlecontents{section}[0em]
    {\vspace{12pt}}
    {\normalfont\normalsize\contentspush{\MakeUppercase{\appendixname}}%
      \contentslabel{-1em}\hspace{2em}\makebox[1em][l]{--}%
    }
    {\hspace*{-2em}}
    {\titlerule*[.75em]{.}\contentspage}
}

The first one gives the desired formatting for regular sections and the seccond one, for sections in appendix; I added Appendix using \contentspush. The first command is used \AtBeginDocument:

\AtBeginDocument{\RegToCEntries}

and the second one is applied automatically after invoking \appendix:

\pretocmd{\appendix}{\AppToCEntries}{}{}

Suggestion

Your code sets

\titlespacing{\section}% Set the spacing around the title
{0pt}                  % Left
{0pt}                  % Above
{0pt}

which suppresses spacing around section titles; I'd suggest you to use positive values in the last two arguments so section titles will have better vertical spacing with respect to the surrounding text.