23

Using \chapter I get:

Chapter 1. The meaning of this novel
Chapter 2. The plot of this novel
Chapter 3. The moral of this novel

I want to get instead:

1. The meaning of this novel
2. The plot of this novel
3. The moral of this novel

cmhughes
  • 100,947
paolo caravani
  • 231

3 Answers3

19

Chapters inside the standard book and report document classes have their headings constructed via \@makechapterhead:

\def\@makechapterhead#1{%
  \vspace*{50\p@}%                                 % Insert 50pt (vertical) space
  {\parindent \z@ \raggedright \normalfont         % No paragraph indent, ragged right
    \ifnum \c@secnumdepth >\m@ne                   % If you should number chapters
      \if@mainmatter                               % ... and you're in \mainmatter
        \huge\bfseries \@chapapp\space \thechapter % huge, bold, Chapter + number
        \par\nobreak                               % paragraph break without page break
        \vskip 20\p@                               % Insert 20pt (vertical) space
      \fi
    \fi
    \interlinepenalty\@M                           % Penalty
    \Huge \bfseries #1\par\nobreak                 % Huge, bold chapter title
    \vskip 40\p@                                   % Insert 40pt (vertical) space
  }}

In order to get rid of some of this titling in the chapter heading (yet keep the ToC untouched), redefine the above \@makechapterhead to your liking. For example, the following redefinition removes the reference to "Chapter", and also places the title next to the number. I've included it in the form of a minimal working example:

enter image description here

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{lipsum}% http://ctan.org/pkg/lipsum
\makeatletter
\def\@makechapterhead#1{%
  \vspace*{50\p@}%
  {\parindent \z@ \raggedright \normalfont
    \ifnum \c@secnumdepth >\m@ne
      \if@mainmatter
        %\huge\bfseries \@chapapp\space \thechapter
        \Huge\bfseries \thechapter.\space%
        %\par\nobreak
        %\vskip 20\p@
      \fi
    \fi
    \interlinepenalty\@M
    \Huge \bfseries #1\par\nobreak
    \vskip 40\p@
  }}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\chapter{The meaning of this novel}\lipsum[1-100]
\chapter{The plot of this novel}\lipsum[1-100]
\chapter{The moral of this novel}\lipsum[1-100]
\end{document}

lipsum provided some dummy text, Lorem Ipsum style.

Werner
  • 603,163
  • This example works well if the document class is "book", but if I change it to "report" I get errors. It still does what it is supposed to do, but how can I get rid of these errors? – PoorYorick Jun 01 '19 at 10:10
  • 1
    @Spectrosaurus: report does not have a distinction between "front matter" and "main matter". As such, \if@mainmatter does not exist. You can remove that part as in this example. – Werner Jun 01 '19 at 16:28
  • Thank you, that explains it! I have to say, this is quite complicated for something that a lot of people often want for their thesis. It might be worth considering to turn this into a package with a few simple commands (for example integration into the header, so that the header does not say "Chapter X" anymore either). Just thinking out loud - if I ever get to the point where I'm more comfortable with Latex coding, I might do this myself. – PoorYorick Jun 02 '19 at 11:59
16

The absolute easiest way to get rid of the word Chapter is to use the corresponding book or report-classes from the KOMA-script-bundle. The classes scrbook and scrreprt have your preferred type of headings as standard. The KOMA-script class files use sans serif font for headings as standard, and if you prefer Roman font in the headings, you change all headings in one go by adding the command:

\addtokomafont{disposition}{\rmfamily}

in your preamble.

A minimal working example:

\documentclass{scrbook}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\addtokomafont{disposition}{\rmfamily}

\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\blinddocument

\appendix
\blinddocument

\end{document}

That is, you just replace

\documentclass{book}

with

\documentclass{scrbook}

and add to your preamble

\addtokomafont{disposition}{\rmfamily}

Edit 10 February 2017

If you prefer to use the standard classes and only want to get rid of the name chapter, i.e. keeping the chapter number on a separate line, you can just redefine the \chaptername-macro:

\documentclass{report}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\renewcommand{\chaptername}{} %% remove the word \chapter

\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\chapter{The meaning of this novel}\lipsum[1-100]
\chapter{The plot of this novel}\lipsum[1-100]
\chapter{The moral of this novel}\lipsum[1-100]
\end{document}
Sveinung
  • 20,355
12

Assuming you're using the book or report document class (or a document class that loads either one of these classes), you could achieve your objective by loading the following code -- which is mostly a quick adaptation of the code for the macro \@makeschapterhead (for unnumbered or "starred" chapter headings) in book.cls -- in your document's preamble:

\makeatletter
\def\@makechapterhead#1{%
  \vspace*{50\p@}%
  {\parindent \z@ \raggedright \normalfont
    \interlinepenalty\@M
    \Huge\bfseries  \thechapter.\quad #1\par\nobreak
    \vskip 40\p@
  }}
\makeatother

Note that the default amounts of vertical whitespace above and below the chapter header are 50pt and 40pt, respectively. Feel free to change these settings to suit your needs.

Mico
  • 506,678