How can I contain the numbering of subsections to a section?

Question

I have a document where I want the subsections of a section to be self contained so I can have a structure like this:

Section heading

a

b

c

Section heading 2

a

b

c

At the moment I have a document structured like this:

\documentclass[12pt, titlepage]{article}
\begin{document}

\renewcommand\thesection{\arabic{section}}
\renewcommand\thesubsection{\alph{subsection}}
\renewcommand\thesubsubsection{\roman{subsubsection}}

\section*{Question 1}
\subsection{}
\subsection{}
\subsection{}
\section*{Question 2}
\subsection{}
\subsection{}
\subsection{}

\end{document}

Which results in the \subsections numbering carrying through to give something like

Question 1

a

b

c

Question 2

d

e

f

How can I prevent this from happening? Also is there a way to format the numbering at all so instead of it just being "a" make it "(a)"?

Answer 1

The second part of your question to change the number formatting just requires the addition of the braces in:

\renewcommand\thesubsection{(\alph{subsection})}

---

The reason the subsection numbers are not being reset is that you are using \section*. So, here is one not so automated way to fix that: Use \setcounter{subsection}{0} to reset the subsection counter:

\documentclass[12pt, titlepage]{article}
\begin{document}

\renewcommand\thesection{\arabic{section}}
\renewcommand\thesubsection{(\alph{subsection})}
\renewcommand\thesubsubsection{\roman{subsubsection}}

\section*{Question 1}
\subsection{}
\subsection{}
\subsection{}

\section*{Question 2}\setcounter{subsection}{0}
\subsection{}
\subsection{}
\subsection{}

\end{document}

---

Alternatively, you could simply use \section instead of \section*:

\documentclass[12pt, titlepage]{article}
\begin{document}

\renewcommand\thesection{Question \arabic{section}}
\renewcommand\thesubsection{(\alph{subsection})}
\renewcommand\thesubsubsection{\roman{subsubsection}}

\section{}
\subsection{}
\subsection{}
\subsection{}

\section{}
\subsection{}
\subsection{}
\subsection{}

\end{document}