Omitting the date when using \maketitle

Question

I'm using the \author and \title commands to produce a title with \maketitle. I also know that there is a \date command to specify the date of my work. However, if I omit \date, \maketitle will produce the current date. How do I achieve that no date is displayed at all?

\documentclass{article}

\author{Author, A.}
\title{Alpha}

\begin{document}

\maketitle

Some text.

\end{document}

score 402 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 29 '12 at 21:04

402

If you want a blank date, just use \date{}.

If you want to remove the spacing altogether where the date usually goes, look into using the titling package, or else the mechanisms provided by your document class, depending on what it is.

edited Jul 29 '12 at 21:04

lockstep

250,273

answered Sep 05 '10 at 16:14

frabjous

41,473

10

If I use \date{} with the article class (instead of simply omitting the date), the vertical alignment of any following text will change as if the spacing was removed. – lockstep Sep 05 '10 at 16:24
4

@lockstep long time post, but testing today (with TexStudio), the \date{} it works fine. – The Student Dec 08 '12 at 23:56
20

For future reference: if you want to use the titling package to remove space, you can do \predate{} and \postdate{} and then \date{} (as above). The same can be done for author (\preauthor{}, \postauthor{}, and \author{}) and title. To remove the space after the title line itself, do \posttitle{\par\end{center}}, which is the same as the default posttitle except with the \vskip 0.5em omitted (see texdoc titling, page 2). – Reid Feb 24 '14 at 13:52
1

Today the spacing seems to be gone already, so it should be fine. – xji Jun 11 '16 at 04:05
1

This approach doesn't seem to work with KOMA. Specifically, the scrartcl class. – Faheem Mitha Jul 28 '19 at 11:33
Thank you for sharing this information – Md Amiruzzaman Mar 23 '20 at 13:45

score 210 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 29 '12 at 21:04

210

For a cheap and easy solution to removing the spacing without delving into the titling package that frabjous mentions, try:

\documentclass{article}

\author{Me}
\title{Foo}
\date{\vspace{-5ex}}
%\date{}  % Toggle commenting to test

\begin{document}

\maketitle

Bar

\end{document}

edited Jul 29 '12 at 21:04

lockstep

250,273

answered Sep 06 '10 at 16:02

vanden

30,891
23
67
87

1

Awesome, also works for removing the author – xvan Sep 16 '22 at 14:52

score 32 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 03 '20 at 10:51

32

@Reid’s titling solution (mentioned above in a comment, and alluded to in @frabjous’s answer) deserves a full answer, since it does a nice job of removing the space associated with the date:

\documentclass{article}

% remove spacing around date:
\usepackage{titling}
\predate{}
\postdate{}

\author{Author, A.}
\title{Alpha}
\date{} % clear date

\begin{document}

\maketitle

Some text.

\end{document}

answered Jan 03 '20 at 10:51

Roly

4,221
4
26
56

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Can you explain how this works? What do \predate{} and \postdate{} do? – Rylan Schaeffer Nov 07 '20 at 19:41
2

@RylanSchaeffer They remove the spacing around the date by setting pre- and post-date hooks (provided by titling package) to empty. – Roly Nov 10 '20 at 12:51
1

This works well in Lyx's preamble for an article. – CodeLurker Jul 09 '22 at 07:29

score 9 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 09 '21 at 10:33

9

Important: ordering matters when using \date{}

In Overleaf, date omission only works if \date{} comes before \maketitle. Minimal Working Example:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\title{Some title}
\date{}
\maketitle
%% \date{} % omission fails if placed after maketitle instead
\end{document}

edited Apr 09 '21 at 10:33

Jasper Habicht

48,848

answered Apr 09 '21 at 10:22

Timothy M Pollington

101

8

In general, \date will always only then have an effect on \maketitle if it comes before \maketitle. And this is not only the case in Overleaf (which just uses a normal TeX distribution anyways). – Jasper Habicht Apr 09 '21 at 10:37

Omitting the date when using \maketitle

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