6

Consider

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{titlesec}

\def\bl#1 #2 {#1\textsuperscript{#2}\,}
\titleformat{\section}[runin]{}{}{0pt}{}[. ]
%\titleformat{\section}[runin]{}{}{0pt}{\bl}[. ]

\begin{document}
\section{3 a 21}
main text.
\end{document}

The intention of the line commented out was to produce the æquivalent of \section{\bl 3 a 21} without having to type \bl for each section; but it produced an error. Can something be done to achieve the intended result?

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3 Answers 3

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5

You have to capture the argument before passing it to \bl. Below we capture it using \@bl before passing it to \bl:

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{titlesec}

\makeatletter
\def\@bl#1{\bl#1}
\def\bl#1 #2 {#1\textsuperscript{#2}\,}
\titleformat{\section}[runin]{}{}{0pt}{\@bl}[. ]
\makeatother

\begin{document}
\section{3 a 21}
main text.
\end{document}
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2
  • because the bracketed expression is read as one argument though it has spaces?
    – Toothrot
    Feb 9, 2016 at 7:49
  • 1
    @Lawrence: It's read as one argument because it is placed inside a group {..}. So using an auxiliary function like \@bl allows you to grab the entire group and pass that to another function \bl, stripping the group, so it can use your delimited requirement.
    – Werner ♦
    Feb 9, 2016 at 14:19
4

You can do it also without any package. The trick is that the argument to \section is passed as a braced group to the final part of the code, so if that part ends with a macro taking an argument, it will see the section title; but you first need to remove the braces. Note that defining the inner macro with three arguments we can easily add the final period.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{showframe}% just for the example

\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\section}{%
  \@startsection{section}{1}{\z@}%
    {-3.5ex \@plus -1ex \@minus -.2ex}%
    {-1em}%
    {\normalfont\process@section@title}%
}
\newcommand{\process@section@title}[1]{\process@section@title@aux#1\@nil}
\def\process@section@title@aux#1 #2 #3\@nil{%
  #1\textsuperscript{#2} #3.%
}
\makeatother

\setcounter{secnumdepth}{0}

\begin{document}

\section{3 a 21}
Some text for the section.

\section{4 a 42}
Some text for the section.

\end{document}

enter image description here

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2
  • Nice. can you also eliminate the double baselineskip?
    – Toothrot
    Feb 9, 2016 at 10:45
  • 1
    @Lawrence The space above the section title is governed by the -3.5ex \@plus -1ex \@minus -.2ex part; change it to your liking.
    – egreg
    Feb 9, 2016 at 10:46
2

This might qualify as "dirty":

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{titlesec}

\def\bl#1 #2 {#1\textsuperscript{#2}\,}
\titleformat{\section}[runin]{}{}{0pt}{}[. ]
\let\oldsect=\section
\def\section#1{\oldsect{\bl#1}}
\begin{document}
\section{3 a 21}
main text.
\end{document}

3a 21. main text.

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