In a twocolumn book, how to add a short introduction to chapters as a one column parapgrah

Question

Here is what I wish to have:

Chapter 2 - Foo

This is an introductory paragraph, spanning over the
whole width of the document.

This is the body of the      |   due to the use of the 
chapter which is written     |   'book' class with the
on two separate columns      |   'twocolumn' option.

How can I achieve this layout?

Edit: I do not want to use multicol since it would be used on each chapter to explicitely specify what should be the default behaviour of my document (i.e. two columns). As such, the referenced question is not a duplicate.

If you are using book class scrbook you can do it using \setchapterpreamble. — Schweinebacke, Nov 29 '17 at 13:59
Where is the MWE, that shows us all the necessary information and can be used to test our suggestions? — Schweinebacke, Nov 29 '17 at 14:10
To have this question reopened (and not closed as too broad after reopening the dup) please add a MWE. — TeXnician, Nov 29 '17 at 18:04

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 29 '17 at 14:08

If you are using the KOMA-Script book class scrbook you can use \setchapterpreamble to set the columns spanning preamble. The wanted chapter head formatting can be achieved redefining \chapterformat:

\documentclass[twocolumn]{scrbook}
\usepackage{mwe}
\renewcommand*{\chapterformat}{\chapapp~\thechapter~--~}
\begin{document}
\setchapterpreamble{This is an introductory paragraph, spanning over the
whole width of the document.\bigskip}
\chapter{Title}
\Blindtext[4]
\end{document}

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 29 '17 at 13:16

1

You should use multicol package:

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{multicol,lipsum}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Title}
This is an introductory paragraph, spanning over the
whole width of the document.
\begin{multicols}{2}
\lipsum
\end{multicols}
\end{document}

answered Nov 29 '17 at 13:16

This is something I thought about, but it seemed unwise to use a multicol for what should be the normal behaviour of my text (the specific behaviour one one column becoming the norm). So I was looking for another solution. – Silverspur Nov 29 '17 at 15:22

In a twocolumn book, how to add a short introduction to chapters as a one column parapgrah

2 Answers2