# Align environment immediately after section break

When I use an align environment immediately after a new section, there is a significantly increased line break between the section and the equation, too large for my taste. Is there a way to make this break the same size as if text were immediately after the section break?

For example:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}

\begin{document}

\section{F at the critical point}
\label{sec:1fi}

\begin{align*}
F(a)&=\frac{1}{2}
\end{align*}

The second derivative test has been to chosen in order to confirm the nature of the critical point:

\begin{align*}
F''(a)&=8+\frac{9}{2a^4}+\frac{5}{4a^6}
\end{align*}

\end{document}


Additionally, there is more space than I would like between the text and the second align, as compared to between the first align and the text.

• Welcome to TeX.SX! Please help us to help you and add a minimal working example (MWE) that illustrates your problem. It will be much easier for us to reproduce your situation and find out what the issue is when we see compilable code, starting with \documentclass{...} and ending with \end{document}. Aug 28 '14 at 13:16
• There is alsways \vspace*{-\baselineskip} Aug 28 '14 at 13:20
• @JohnKormylo Which is not a good thing to teach new users (some of us spend loads of time removing that sort of constructions from manuscripts). It might be better to know why a section is started with a displayed formula. This is normally never seen in any regular math text. Aug 28 '14 at 13:25
• Is there a reason for not having some text between the section header and the align environment? Is the section header sufficiently self-explanatory to make text unnecessary?
– Mico
Aug 28 '14 at 14:04
• @Mico The document is an assignment in a question-answer format, so the header is sufficient explanation for the section. Aug 30 '14 at 1:34

It turns out that the additional space was caused by the line breaks - commenting these lines out solves this issue (Spacing around align environments). \vspace*{-\baselineskip} is sufficient when the environment follows a section header.