How to control chapter headings in report documentclass

Question

I've been using Latex for a while but I'm now starting to write my thesis and I'm having trouble with the chapter headings.

I'm using the report documentclass as it allows my to use the \include command so I can have a file per chapter.

The issue I'm having is that I need to be able to control the chapter headings. I'd like to be able to get rid of the automatic "Chapter n" before the chapter title and the title also needs to be centered.

I've tried a few things but all of them seem to mean I have to change the documentclass and this is something I don't really want to do.

Any help would be great. Thanks

Answer 1

I suggest that you redefine the chapter headings using the titlesec package. It is very advanced, but it is easy to make your requested changes.

Alternatively, you can use the less advance secsty package, but maybe you will not achieve your goal.

Another possibility is to replace your report-class with scrreprt from the KOMA-script-bundle. KOMAscript is a drop-in replacement for the standard class, but with the possibility to change headings etc. easily.

And finally, you can redefine the report class definition. At Vincent Zoonekynd homepage, you will find necessary code, for titles, for chapters and for sections.

Here is a modification of Zoonekynd's code that (hopefully) remove the word Chapter, put the number and the heading at the same line with a quad space in between, and then centre the heading. You have to modify the font size and space above and below yourself.

\documentclass{report}
\makeatletter
\def\@makechapterhead#1{%
  \vspace*{10\p@}%
  {\parindent \z@ \centering \reset@font
        \par\nobreak
        \vspace*{2\p@}%
        {\Huge \bfseries \thechapter\quad #1\par\nobreak}
        \par\nobreak
        \vspace*{2\p@}%
    %\vskip 40\p@
    \vskip 100\p@
  }}
\def\@makeschapterhead#1{%
  \vspace*{10\p@}%
  {\parindent \z@ \centering \reset@font
        \par\nobreak
        \vspace*{2\p@}%
        {\Huge \bfseries #1\par\nobreak}
        \par\nobreak
        \vspace*{2\p@}%
    \vskip 100\p@
  }}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
\chapter{Introduction}

Test test
\end{document}