\addtotoc starts new page

Question

I have a section which I don't want to be numbered, but which I still want in the table of contents. So I have written

\addtotoc{section}{My section}
\section*{My section}

I have done the same thing for all the subsections in this section. The problem is just that the subsections end up at separate pages, creating a lot of empty space in my document. If I remove the \addtotoc macro then the problem disappears. The question is why \addtotoc automatically starts a new page and if this can be turned off?

Answer 1

It's quite difficult to answer without any example and the indication of the used class. I guess it's ClemsonThesis, where the \addtotoc command is defined as

\newcommand{\addtotoc}[2]{
    \phantomsection
    \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{#1}
    #2 \clearpage
}

and the definition makes clear why a new page is started. It's quite difficult to understand what's the intended usage of this macro, but it's rather clear that it doesn't suit your needs.

If your sections are never numbered, you solve all problems by saying

\setcounter{secnumdepth}{0}

in your document preamble and then using \section{Section Title} without any other code.

An occasional unnumbered section can be treated by

\phantomsection
\section*{My section}
\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{My section}

You might want to define a special command:

\newcommand{\usection}[1]{%
  \phantomsection
  \section*{#1}
  \addcontentsline{toc}{section}{#1}
}