2

I would like to have the sections of my document to just be separated by a vertical space, with no visible section header. Furthermore, I would like the first paragraph of each section start without an indent.

I tried the following minimal working example for an \invisiblesection command, taken from this question. Unfortunately, any text that follows this \invisiblesection command gets indented:

\documentclass{article}

\newcommand\invisiblesection[1]{%
  \refstepcounter{section}%
  \addcontentsline{toc}{section}{\protect\numberline{\thesection}#1}%
  \sectionmark{#1}}


\begin{document}

\invisiblesection{First Section}
The section header is invisible :) but the paragraph starts with an indent :(

\section{Second Section}
The section header is visible :( but the paragraph starts with no indent :)

\end{document}

Adding \noindent to the end of \invisiblesection doesn't fix this. Adding \noindent to the beginning of each new section does fix it, but I would like this to happen automatically, as it does when I use the normal section environment.

Community
  • 1
SuperElectric
  • 1,685

2 Answers2

2

You can use titlesec to suppress the title; here's an example where I used fancyhdr to show that the \leftmark is correctly set.

The spacing can be adjusted with \titlespacing*{\section}... (note the asterisk).

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{titlesec}
\makeatletter
\titleformat{\section}[block]{}{}{0pt}{\@gobble}
\makeatother

\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\renewcommand{\sectionmark}[1]{\markboth{#1}{#1}}
\fancyhf{}
\fancyhead[C]{\leftmark}
\fancyfoot[C]{\thepage}

\usepackage{lipsum}

\begin{document}

\lipsum[1]

\section{First section}

\lipsum

\section{Second section}

\lipsum

\end{document}

enter image description here

egreg
  • 1,121,712
  • Hmm, when I try adjusting the vertical spacing, it seems to undo the \noindent of the first paragraph in each section. I'm using the following: \titlespacing\section{0pt}{0pt plus 4pt minus 2pt}{0pt plus 2pt minus 2pt} \renewcommand\thesection{\noindent} – SuperElectric May 09 '13 at 20:59
  • @SuperElectric Sorry, you have to use \titlespacing* which is the version that suppresses indentation on the next paragraph. – egreg May 09 '13 at 21:21
1

[EDITED to respond to user request]

\documentclass{article}
\renewcommand\thesection{\noindent}
\let\svsection\section
\renewcommand\section{\vspace*{-3.5\baselineskip}\svsection}
\begin{document}

\section{}

This follows a section

Second paragraph

Third paragraph

\section{}

Paragraph after new section

second paragraph

third paragraph

\end{document}

enter image description here

Steven B. Segletes
  • 237,551
  • Almost! Is there a way to set the vertical spacing between paragraphs? I'm getting rid of section titles to save space, so I'd like to reduce it to around 1 line. – SuperElectric May 09 '13 at 20:39
  • I changed -3.5 to -2.5, and this worked perfectly (i.e. left 1 line of spacing between each section). Thank you! – SuperElectric May 09 '13 at 21:34