Section Heading Centering problem

Question

\begin{center}
    \section*{\textcolor{blue}{Ukaaranta }}
    \end{center}
    \subsection*{Shabhu Harivat}
    \addcontentsline{toc}{subsection}{shambhu harivat} 
\begin{center}
    \section*{\textcolor{blue}{Krostru Shabda}}
\end{center}

I have a need to create something like this, however when I run this program, it gives error at the second "\end{center}" Funny but the same command works above. did not do anything different just copy pasted and changed the text. Similar commands on elsewhere in the document work just fine. I have no clue why its behaving like this. Hit ? and R - enter and it gives the desired output but its a pain to do that every-time. Thanks for your help

Answer 1

If you want to centre your titles and make them blue, them redefine the title format using a package like titlesec. If all your sections and subsections are going to be unnumbered, redefine them that way, also with titlesec. If you don't want numbers in your table of contents, set the secnumdepth to 0. Here's an example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{titlesec}
\titleformat{\section}[block]{\color{blue}\Large\bfseries\filcenter}{}{1em}{}
\titleformat{\subsection}[hang]{\bfseries}{}{1em}{}
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{0}
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
    \section{Ukaaranta}
    \subsection{Shabhu Harivat}
    \section{Krostru Shabda}
\end{document}

(You can adjust the vertical spacing of the titles also with titlesec using the \titlespacing command.)

Answer 2

\begin{center} ... \end{center} creates a list with centered items. It should not be used for headings.

\centering works here, because you use \section* which doesn't process the argument for TOC or page headers. Your code could be changed to:

\section*{\centering\textcolor{blue}{Ukaaranta }}
\subsection*{Shabhu Harivat}
\addcontentsline{toc}{subsection}{shambhu harivat} 
\section*{\centering\textcolor{blue}{Krostru Shabda}}

For a consistent document you should create macros for the style, such as

\newcommand*{\sectioncolor}{blue}
\newcommand*{\sectionformat}{\centering\color{\sectioncolor}}
...
\section*{\sectionformat Ukaaranta}

This way you could change the style of the whole document at just one place.

For more possibilities have a look at the titlesec package which provides many features for customizing style and spacing of headings.