[Tex/LaTex] Why doesn’t \pagestyle{empty} work on the first page of a chapter

chaptersheader-footerpage-numberingsectioning

Here's a minimal case of the problem:

\documentclass{book}

\pagestyle{empty}

\begin{document}

\chapter{The first}

This page has a page number\ldots

\newpage

\ldots but not this one.

\end{document}

I've surmised (by removing it) that the problem has something to do with the \chapter line. But what caused this issue and how do I correct it?

Best Answer

The page style for the first page of a chapter is set internally (in the book and report document classes) to be plain; you can change this behaviour by adding the following lines to the preamble of your document:

\makeatletter
\renewcommand\chapter{\if@openright\cleardoublepage\else\clearpage\fi
                    \thispagestyle{empty}% original style: plain
                    \global\@topnum\z@
                    \@afterindentfalse
                    \secdef\@chapter\@schapter}
\makeatother

or, using the etoolbox package:

\usepackage{etoolbox}
\patchcmd{\chapter}{plain}{empty}{}{}

If the plain style is not needed elsewhere, then you can redefine it to be the empty page style; this can be done with:

\makeatletter
  \let\ps@plain\ps@empty
\makeatother

Finally, in the scrbook document class (from the KOMA-Script bundle), the style for the first page of chapters can be changed simply by redefining the \chapterpagestyle command, as in:

\renewcommand*\chapterpagestyle{empty}

EDIT: added egreg's remarks.

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