How to avoid widow lines in Table of contents (TOC)

Question

I have a Table of Contents page (the last page, page 3) which just has one line on it. Is there a way of manually editing it so, say, Chapter 3 starts on page 2, as opposed to straddling pages 1 and 2? This would presumably push the rest of everything down and lead to a more "balanced" page 3.

Here are some relevant [I hope!] files:

\let\oldtableofcontents = \tableofcontents
\renewcommand{\tableofcontents}{ 
\newpage
\pagestyle{plain}
\begin{singlespace} 
\oldtableofcontents 
\end{singlespace}}

I, and I guess many others too, do not understand the question. Be more specific and maybe post a picture explaining what the problem is. — jub0bs, Feb 27 '13 at 02:18
Have you tried enlarging the first page of the ToC by one line, by inserting the instruction \enlargethispage{1\baselineskip} immediately before \tableofcontents? This might just suffice to let LaTeX typeset the entire ToC on two pages. — Mico, Feb 27 '13 at 03:38

score 8 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:35

There are a number of options, but in answer to your question, you can insert a page break in the ToC at any point within the document flow by using:

\addtocontents{toc}{\protect\newpage}

You would add the above just before \chapter{<chapter 3>} (see also How can I force ToC not to end with a chapter?). An alternative would be to insert a \enlargethispage{\baselineskip} in the ToC

\addtocontents{toc}{\protect\enlargethispage{\baselineskip}}

at the appropriate location (see also Change margins on the first of \tableofcontents page only). However, this may not be suitable as it would yield an uneven page block in the ToC.

How to avoid widow lines in Table of contents (TOC)

1 Answers1