How to insert the section name in the footer, without keeping the section name formatting?

Question

The code that I use for the header and footer in the article format is as follows:

\usepackage{fancyhdr}

\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhf{}
\rhead{}
\lhead{Project tile}
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{2.0pt}
\renewcommand{\footrulewidth}{1.0pt} 
\rfoot{Page \thepage}
\lfoot{\leftmark}

The problem is that this also prints the formatting that I've put to the section name to make it stand out:

\section{\LARGE{\textbf{Introduction}}}

This just increases the size, and makes the section name bold. So how do I put the current section name in the footer, without the footer name also being big and bold.

Answer 1

You're following the wrong approach. You should avoid setting sectional formatting inside the title, since this would make its way into the marks (typically used in headers/footers) and also the ToC, which is not ideal.

Instead, use something like sectsty to format your sectional fonts (see Change size of section, subsection, subsubsection, paragraph and subparagraph title):

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{sectsty,fancyhdr}
\sectionfont{\LARGE\bfseries}% https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/59726/5764

\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhf{}
\lhead{Project tile}
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{2.0pt}
\renewcommand{\footrulewidth}{1.0pt} 
\rfoot{Page \thepage}
\lfoot{\leftmark}

\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\sectionmark}[1]{%
  \markboth{\ifnum \c@secnumdepth>\z@
      \thesection\hskip 1em\relax
    \fi #1}{}}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\tableofcontents

\section{Introduction}

\end{document}

Above I also updated the \sectionmark macro to avoid inserting \MakeUppercase as part of the default construction. You can remove that if necessary.

Answer 2

If you use a KOMA-class (scrartcl and so on) you can accomplish this without fancyhdr and with scrlayer-scrpage.

\documentclass{scrartcl}

\usepackage{scrlayer-scrpage}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\setkomafont{section}{<formatting>}% changes the formatting of headlines
\KOMAoptions{%
    headsepline=2pt,
    footsepline=1pt
}

\ihead{Project title}
\chead{}% if you leave this out the pagehead will contain the sectionnames, too
\ifoot{\headmark}% the i is for inner side of the page if you use twoside and left side if you use oneside
\cfoot{}% if you leave this out the pagenumber will be in the center, too
\ofoot{Page \pagemark}
\automark[section]{section}
\pagestyle{scrheadings}

\begin{document}
\section{foo}
\lipsum[1-10]
\end{document}

You might use \cfoot or \ofoot as an alternative to \ifoot. If you want those to be in the head just use \ihead, \chead or \ohead.

EDIT: Added the head- and footsepline.