“Negative offset” chapter title

Question

I need my chapter titles to be offset 2cm to the left of everything else (or my section headings and paragraphs to be offset right, depending on what you call the reference point).

I got the chapter title offset using:

\renewcommand{\printchaptertitle}[1]{%
\begin{adjustwidth}{-2.5cm}{}
  \chaptitlefont ##1
\end{adjustwidth}}

but I can't get the chapter name and number to work - I keep getting 'space factor' errors when I try and redefine \printchaptername. I'm using memoir, and I've read the manual. I just can't understand it.

Is there an easy way of doing this?

Answer 1

You can modify \printchaptername and \printchaptertitle in the following way:

\documentclass{memoir}% http://ctan.org/pkg/memoir
\makeatletter
\renewcommand*{\printchaptername}{\hspace*{-2cm}\chapnamefont\@chapapp}%
\renewcommand*{\printchaptertitle}[1]{\hspace*{-2cm}\chaptitlefont #1}%
\makeatletter
\begin{document}
\chapter{A chapter}
Here is some text.
\section{Here is a section}
Here is some more text.
\end{document}

The above MWE inserts a negative 2cm horizontal space before printing both the chapter name and title. The rest of the definition remains intact.

Note that other chapter title styles may require a slightly different modification, depending on their definition of the above commands.