Make sections begin on even-numbered pages in documentclass article

Question

I've understood that it's easily solved in the book class. But is there a simple solution for how to do this in the article class?

Answer 1

Normally you'd want to start on an odd page:

\let\oldsection\section
\def\section{\cleardoublepage\oldsection}

If you really do want to have the headings on even pages, modify the definition of \cleardoublepage (taking out an \else to give \clearevenpage

\documentclass[twoside]{article}


\let\oldsection\section
\def\section{\clearevenpage\oldsection}

\makeatletter
\def\clearevenpage{\clearpage\if@twoside \ifodd\c@page
    \hbox{}\newpage\if@twocolumn\hbox{}\newpage\fi\fi\fi}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\section{aaa}
one
\section{aaaa}
one two three
\section{jjaaaa}
one two three four

\end{document}

Answer 2

You can put

\makeatletter
\def\cleartoleftpage{\clearpage\if@twoside \ifodd\c@page
\hbox{}\newpage\if@twocolumn\hbox{}\newpage\fi\fi\fi}
\makeatother

in your preamble and then prefix sections with \cleartoleftpage.

Answer 3

The following uses changepage's strict mode to set a label for every section and check whether it's odd, issuing the necessary page breaks. It takes a couple of compiles (...number of sections), to stabilize the ToC. The command \evenpagesection initiates the sequence:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}% http://ctan.org/pkg/lipsum
\usepackage[strict]{changepage}% http://ctan.org/pkg/changepage
\newcommand{\evenpagesection}{%
  \global\let\oldsection\section
  \renewcommand\section{%
    \clearpage\checkoddpage%
    \ifoddpage\null\clearpage\fi%
    \oldsection
  }%
}
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\evenpagesection % Start sections on an even page
\section{First section}
\lipsum[1]
\section{Second section}
\lipsum[2]
\section{Third section}
\lipsum[3]
\section{Last section}
\lipsum[4]
\end{document}