Format section titles as white text on black background

Question

I would like to redefine the \section and \section* to produce section titles that look roughly like this: illustration of desired section title formatting that is, text in white over a black bar that extends from left to right margin. I don't anticipate any section titles being longer than one line.

Related Q&A's: Shaded box around multiline section heading?, How to place a shaded box around a section label and name. — Nikos Alexandris, Oct 14 '12 at 16:10

score 21 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 07 '12 at 03:06

21

Here's one possible solution using the explicit option for the titlesec package:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[explicit]{titlesec}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\titleformat{\section}
{\normalfont\Large\bfseries}{}{0em}{\colorbox{black}{\parbox{\dimexpr\textwidth-2\fboxsep\relax}{\textcolor{white}{\thesection\quad#1}}}}
\titleformat{name=\section,numberless}
{\normalfont\Large\bfseries}{}{0em}{\colorbox{black}{\parbox{\dimexpr\textwidth-2\fboxsep\relax}{\textcolor{white}{#1}}}}

\begin{document}

\section{A Test Section}
\lipsum[4]
\section{Another Test Section}
\lipsum[4]
\section{Another Test Section with a long title spanning more than one line}
\lipsum[4]
\section*{An Unnumbered Test Section}
\lipsum[4]

\end{document}

The idea is to use a \parbox of width equal to \textwidth (-2\fboxsep) inside a black \colorbox; inside this \colorbox the text is set to white using \textcolor.

enter image description here

edited Jun 07 '12 at 03:06

pluton

16,421

answered Jun 07 '12 at 02:28

Gonzalo Medina

505,128

This solution does not exhibit the expected behavior with \section* (it correctly does not increment thesection, but it still displays it). It also adds a lot of undesirable extra vertical space above and below the section title. – thecommexokid Jun 07 '12 at 02:36
Hadn't seen your edit yet. First objection retracted. Second still stands. – thecommexokid Jun 07 '12 at 02:37
@thecommexokid see my updated answer. Is that what you want? – Gonzalo Medina Jun 07 '12 at 02:39
Is very nice now, yes. Could you explain what all the parts are doing? – thecommexokid Jun 07 '12 at 02:41
4

@thecommexokid I've added a brief explanation; \titleformat is explained in the documentation of titlesec. – Gonzalo Medina Jun 07 '12 at 02:45

Format section titles as white text on black background

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