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I would like to have the sections of my document to just be separated by a vertical space, with no visible section header. Furthermore, I would like the first paragraph of each section start without an indent.

I tried the following minimal working example for an \invisiblesection command, taken from this question. Unfortunately, any text that follows this \invisiblesection command gets indented:

\documentclass{article}

\newcommand\invisiblesection[1]{%
  \refstepcounter{section}%
  \addcontentsline{toc}{section}{\protect\numberline{\thesection}#1}%
  \sectionmark{#1}}


\begin{document}

\invisiblesection{First Section}
The section header is invisible :) but the paragraph starts with an indent :(

\section{Second Section}
The section header is visible :( but the paragraph starts with no indent :)

\end{document}

Adding \noindent to the end of \invisiblesection doesn't fix this. Adding \noindent to the beginning of each new section does fix it, but I would like this to happen automatically, as it does when I use the normal section environment.

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7
  • 3
    A blank lines indicates a new paragraph. How do you make a new paragraph?
    – Marco Daniel
    May 9, 2013 at 19:44
  • 3
    Can you clarify? I think of a blank line as what defines an end of paragraph, unless I insert a \par. So how do you mean a difference between "follows the previous paragraph" and "follows a blank line"?
    – Steven B. Segletes
    May 9, 2013 at 19:46
  • 1
    Have you any serious reasons for breaking a five century old tradition in typography?
    – egreg
    May 9, 2013 at 20:13
  • Sorry, that was very unclear of me. I have fixed the question. Egreg: a 40-century tradition of ignoring schoolmarms?
    – SuperElectric
    May 9, 2013 at 20:19
  • Add \@afterheading to your definition of \invisiblesection
    – Marco Daniel
    May 9, 2013 at 20:26

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

[EDITED to respond to user request]

\documentclass{article}
\renewcommand\thesection{\noindent}
\let\svsection\section
\renewcommand\section{\vspace*{-3.5\baselineskip}\svsection}
\begin{document}

\section{}

This follows a section

Second paragraph

Third paragraph

\section{}

Paragraph after new section

second paragraph

third paragraph

\end{document}

enter image description here

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2
  • Almost! Is there a way to set the vertical spacing between paragraphs? I'm getting rid of section titles to save space, so I'd like to reduce it to around 1 line.
    – SuperElectric
    May 9, 2013 at 20:39
  • I changed -3.5 to -2.5, and this worked perfectly (i.e. left 1 line of spacing between each section). Thank you!
    – SuperElectric
    May 9, 2013 at 21:34
2

You can use titlesec to suppress the title; here's an example where I used fancyhdr to show that the \leftmark is correctly set.

The spacing can be adjusted with \titlespacing*{\section}... (note the asterisk).

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{titlesec}
\makeatletter
\titleformat{\section}[block]{}{}{0pt}{\@gobble}
\makeatother

\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\renewcommand{\sectionmark}[1]{\markboth{#1}{#1}}
\fancyhf{}
\fancyhead[C]{\leftmark}
\fancyfoot[C]{\thepage}

\usepackage{lipsum}

\begin{document}

\lipsum[1]

\section{First section}

\lipsum

\section{Second section}

\lipsum

\end{document}

enter image description here

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2
  • Hmm, when I try adjusting the vertical spacing, it seems to undo the \noindent of the first paragraph in each section. I'm using the following: \titlespacing\section{0pt}{0pt plus 4pt minus 2pt}{0pt plus 2pt minus 2pt} \renewcommand\thesection{\noindent}
    – SuperElectric
    May 9, 2013 at 20:59
  • @SuperElectric Sorry, you have to use \titlespacing* which is the version that suppresses indentation on the next paragraph.
    – egreg
    May 9, 2013 at 21:21

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