Which Command? A paragraph, first word bold, not listed in table of contents

Question

i couldnt find this on web search, my prof. told me to use a "paragraph" command, with attributes like in the headline description, in certain situations. But all I could find is a command called "paragraph", it lists itself in the table of contents though, which I want to avoid. Which command am I looking for to get what I need.

I use this document class

\documentclass[ngerman,bt]{dbvdoc}

thanks a lot in advance, daniel

Answer 1

Play with both counters of the minimal example, or use paragraph*, or use the description environment if do you want also a hanging indent

\documentclass{article}
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{3}
\setcounter{tocdepth}{3}
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents{}
\section{Section}
\subsection{Subsection}
\subsubsection{Subsubsection}
\paragraph{paragraph } numbered but not listed in TOC.
\paragraph*{Paragraph } not numbered and not listed.
\begin{description}
\item [{description}] environment
\item [{second}] item of descrition
\end{description}
\end{document
\end{document}

Answer 2

\paragraph is a sectioning command whose numbering and inclusion in the table of contents is governed by the counters secnumdepth and tocdepth.

Specifically (in the standard classes) it is considered at level 4:

chapter = 0 (if existent in the class)
section = 1
subsection = 2
subsubsection = 3
paragraph = 4
subparagraph = 5

Thus any setting such as \setcounter{tocdepth}{<n>} (where <n> is an integer less than 4) will not include sections introduced by \paragraph in the table of contents. The default value of tocdepth is 2.

However, sections introduced with \paragraph* will not be numbered nor included in the table of contents.

I recommend you not using \paragraph* directly, though: write in your preamble something like

\newcommand{\mydivision}[1]{\paragraph*{#1}}

and use \mydivision{Word}. You may so easily change your mind about the rendering of these things. For example, a definition that doesn't abuse the sectioning commands might be

\newcommand{\mydivision}[1]{%
  \par\addvspace{\baselineskip}
  \noindent\textbf{#1}\enspace\ignorespaces}

Answer 3

You should try to include these two lines in your preamble. They modify the depth of table of contents:

\setcounter{tocdepth}{3}
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{3}