How do I create an acknowledgment section?

Question

I am trying to add an acknowledgment section like. I have tried the 'acknowledgments' and 'acknowledgements' environments (as seen on the internet), but LaTex did not recognized it.

Answer 1

In a chapter based document:

\cleardoublepage% especially in a document where chapters start at right-hand pages
\phantomsection% for an anchor if you use hyperref
\addtocontents{toc}{chapter}{Acknowledgements}% if you wish to have a TOC entry
\chapter*{Acknowledgements}% for the actuall unnumbered heading
\thispagestyle{empty}% or plain etc.
\markboth{Acknowledgements}{Acknowledgements}% relevant depending on page style
    % or if it's more than one page

Similar with \section*, if required as section. Omit lines above which you don't need.

Here you might see, a macro name for Acknowledgements could be good, and using that, i.e.

\newcommand*{\ackname}{Acknowledgements}

Answer 2

Most classes don't provide a environment for the acknowledgements. I do my acknowledgements for my thesis the following way:

\chapter*{Acknowledgements}
\thispagestyle{empty}

I like to acknowledge ...

\clearpage

This adds a chapter-like headline without number on a page of its own. I like to also not have a page number for it. Afterwards flush the page using a \clearpage, just to be on the safe side.

If you writing a paper or other article-like document use \section* instead of \chapter* and skip the other commands.