How can I produce an unnumbered chapter for the introduction?

Question

If I did

\setcounter{chapter}{-1}
\chapter{Introduction}

then I get Chapter 0 Introduction. I just want the word Introduction, and I want it also in the contents when I use

 \tableofcontents

How can I do that?

Answer 1

If you're working in the book documentclass, then you should use the starred version of \chapter to obtain a chapter without the counter visible. See

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\chapter*{Introduction}
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Introduction} \markboth{INTRODUCTION}{} \lipsum[1-5]
\chapter{First chapter} \lipsum[6-10]
\chapter{Second chapter} \lipsum[11-15]
\chapter{Last chapter} \lipsum[16-20]
\end{document}​

The addition of \markboth{...}{...} ensures that the correct page heading is followed as with the other regular (unstarred) \chapter{...} commands.

Answer 2

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

\tableofcontents
\section*{Introduction}

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Introduction}

\section{This is a section}

\end{document}

This needs to be run twice for the introduction to appear.

How LaTeX does tables of contents and similar things (tables of figures...) is that each time it finds a thing of the relevant sort (in this case a section command) it writes that information to a file (in this case file.toc if your main file is file.tex). What \addcontentsline does is it tells LaTeX to pay attention to this extra thing that it wouldn't normally add to the file. The three arguments are (roughly) what file to add the thing to, what sort of thing it is and what to actually add to the file at that point.

Then when it sees \tableofcontents it reads file.toc and outputs the table of contents. (This is why it won't show up on the first run through: it's read \tableofcontents already by the time it gets to \addcontentsline!)

For books, use \chapter* instead of \section* and change section to chapter in the \addcontentsline command

Answer 3

In the »book« class you can divide your document into three parts (front, main, back). This has some effects that should do what you want.

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{book}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

\begin{document}
  \frontmatter
  \tableofcontents

  \chapter{Introduction}

  \mainmatter
  \chapter{Theorie}
  \chapter{Practice}

  \appendix
  \chapter{Notes}

  \backmatter
  \begin{thebibliography}{9}
    \bibitem{key} Bibliogrpahy Item
  \end{thebibliography}
\end{document}

Answer 4

The easiest way to do this is to set the secnumdepth to -1 before the introduction chapter and then set it to whatever value you need for the subsequent chapters after the introduction chapter:

\documentclass{book}

\begin{document}
\frontmatter
\tableofcontents
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{-1}
\mainmatter
\chapter{Introduction}
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{3} % or some other value
\chapter{First Chapter}
\end{document}