Section title with subtitle

Question

I'm using the memoir class, I would like to create a more fancy section title, but I don't have the necessary skills in LaTeX. I found many fancy section titles on this forum, but I don't know how to customize it to make it look the way I want it. Is it possible to modify the section title to look like this (I drew this myself in OmniGraffle):

enter image description here

However, with these options:

Date and subtitle are optional, not all sections have them
Date is not necessarily today, but some day in the past
No section number is shown
both section title and subtitle can be longer than single line

Any help greatly appreciated!

score 7 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 15 '13 at 21:36

A possible improvement of Gonzalo's solution is using a key-value syntax:

\documentclass[article]{memoir}
\usepackage[margin=3cm]{geometry}% just for the example
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[explicit]{titlesec}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{textcase}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{keyval}
\usepackage{microtype}

\makeatletter
\define@key{mosquito}{date}{\def\mosquito@date{#1}}
\define@key{mosquito}{subtitle}{\def\mosquito@subtitle{#1}}
\newcommand\sectiondatefont{\normalfont\sffamily\itshape\bfseries\Large}
\newcommand\sectionsubtitlefont{\normalfont\sffamily\LARGE}

\titleformat{\section}
  {\normalfont\bfseries\sffamily}{}{0em}
  {\colorbox{gray}{%
    \parbox{\dimexpr\textwidth-2\fboxsep-2\fboxrule\relax}{%
      \vspace{.5ex}%
      \ifx\mosquito@date\@empty\else
        {\sectiondatefont\mosquito@date\endgraf}
      \fi
      \raggedright
      \textcolor{white}{\huge\textls[50]{\MakeTextUppercase{#1}}\endgraf}
      \addvspace{.5ex}
      \ifx\mosquito@subtitle\@empty\else
        \endgraf{\sectionsubtitlefont\mosquito@subtitle\endgraf}
      \fi
      \addvspace{.5ex}
      }%
    }%
  }
\newcommand{\Section}[1][]{%
  \setkeys{mosquito}{date={},subtitle={},#1}%
  \section*}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\Section[date={March 15, 2013},
  subtitle={Test Subtitle}]
  {Test Section With a Title Spanning Two Lines}
\lipsum[4]

\Section{Test Section}
\lipsum[4]

\Section[date={April 23, 2009}]
  {Another Test Section}
\lipsum[4]

\Section[subtitle={Another Test Subtitle}]
  {Test Section}
\lipsum[4]

\end{document}

I added perhaps better control of the vertical spacing and also letterspaced the uppercase title. Unfortunately Computer Modern and Latin Modern fonts lack sans serif small caps.

enter image description here

Thank you so much! I love this forum already, I can't believe how fast I got great answers to my question. — m0squito, Mar 16 '13 at 00:34
I applied your approach egreg and I love the way it looks in my document. However, I just noticed that it caused my TOC to disappear. I am using \usepackage[pdftex]{hyperref} to produce a PDF with TOC. Is there a way to fix this, or is this a hyperref issue? Thanks! — m0squito, Mar 18 '13 at 01:26
@m0squito You should use \section instead of \section* and add \setcounter{secnumdepth}{0} in the preamble, so that sections won't be numbered, but will go to the TOC nonetheless. — egreg, Mar 18 '13 at 09:27

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:34

Here's one possibility, using the titlesec package; before each \section, some commands can be used: \undefds suppresses previous dates and subtitles; \sectiondate{<text>} assigns <text> as the date for the following \section, and \sectionsubtitle{<text>} assigns <text> as the subtitle for the following \section.

Since titlesec was used, somre restrictions apply (See About memoir and titlesec incompatibility). The code:

\documentclass[article]{memoir}
\usepackage[margin=3cm]{geometry}% just for the example
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[explicit]{titlesec}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{textcase}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\makeatletter
\newcommand*\nameundef[1]{%
  \expandafter\let\csname #1\endcsname\@undefined}
\newcommand\sectiondatefont{\normalfont\sffamily\itshape\bfseries\Large}
\newcommand\sectionsubtitlefont{\normalfont\sffamily\LARGE}
\newcommand\sectiondate[1]{\def\@sectiondate{#1}}
\newcommand\sectionsubtitle[1]{\def\@sectionsubtitle{#1}}
\titleformat{\section}
  {\normalfont\bfseries\huge\sffamily}{}{0em}
  {\colorbox{gray}{%
    \parbox[t]{\dimexpr\textwidth-2\fboxsep-2\fboxrule\relax}{%
      \vspace*{1ex}%
      \@ifundefined{@sectiondate}
        {}{{\sectiondatefont\@sectiondate}\\*}%
      \raggedright%
      \textcolor{white}{\huge\MakeTextUppercase{#1}}%
      \@ifundefined{@sectionsubtitle}
        {}{\\*{\sectionsubtitlefont\@sectionsubtitle}}%
      \vspace*{1ex}
      }%
    }%
  }
\newcommand\undefds{%
  \nameundef{@sectiondate}\nameundef{@sectionsubtitle}}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\sectiondate{March 15, 2013}
\sectionsubtitle{Test Subtitle}
\section{Test Section With a Title Spanning Two Lines}
\lipsum[4]

\undefds
\section{Test Section}
\lipsum[4]

\undefds
\sectiondate{April 23, 2009}
\section{Another Test Section}
\lipsum[4]

\undefds
\sectionsubtitle{Another Test Subtitle}
\section{Test Section}
\lipsum[4]

\end{document}

An image of the result:

enter image description here

Thank you so much for your work, this is exactly what I was looking for! — m0squito, Mar 16 '13 at 00:33

Section title with subtitle

2 Answers2