Amsart Title Whitespace Problem

Question

I have found myself now several pages into a maths paper for my university degree, and I am writing it in the less familiar AMSART document class. The document class is very neat and everything works and looks great, but I have a minor issue with the amount of white-space between the bold first-page title and the top of the page. This amount of spacing is way too much for this document as I am restricted to 11 pages and so I need to make efficient use of spacing. My (generalised) code is given below.

\documentclass[11pt,reqno]{amsart}

%-------Packages-----------------------
\usepackage{amssymb,amsfonts}
\usepackage[all,arc]{xy}
\usepackage{enumerate}
\usepackage{mathrsfs}
\usepackage[a4paper, top=2.8cm, left=2cm, right=2cm, bottom=2cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{wrapfig}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepgflibrary{arrows} 
\usepgflibrary[arrows] 
\usetikzlibrary{arrows}
\usetikzlibrary[arrows]
\usetikzlibrary{automata} 
\usetikzlibrary[automata] 
\usetikzlibrary{positioning}
\usepackage{framed}
\usepackage{multicol}
\usepackage{caption}
\usepackage{subcaption}
\usepackage[english]{babel} %used for this example
\usepackage{blindtext}      %used for this example


%--------Theorem Environments----------
\newtheorem{thm}{Theorem}[section]
\newtheorem{cor}[thm]{Corollary}
\newtheorem{prop}[thm]{Proposition}
\newtheorem{lem}[thm]{Lemma}
\newtheorem{conj}[thm]{Conjecture}
\newtheorem{quest}[thm]{Question}

\theoremstyle{definition}
\newtheorem{defn}[thm]{Definition}
\newtheorem{defns}[thm]{Definitions}
\newtheorem{con}[thm]{Construction}
\newtheorem{exmp}[thm]{Example}
\newtheorem{exmps}[thm]{Examples}
\newtheorem{notn}[thm]{Notation}
\newtheorem{notns}[thm]{Notations}
\newtheorem{addm}[thm]{Addendum}
\newtheorem{exer}[thm]{Exercise}

\theoremstyle{remark}
\newtheorem{rem}[thm]{Remark}
\newtheorem{rems}[thm]{Remarks}
\newtheorem{warn}[thm]{Warning}
\newtheorem{sch}[thm]{Scholium}

\makeatletter
\let\c@equation\c@thm
\makeatother
\numberwithin{equation}{section}

\bibliographystyle{plain}

%--------Info----------------------------
\title{\vspace{-1cm}Title}
\author{\vspace{-0.5cm}Author\vspace{-1cm}}
%----------------------------------------

\begin{document}

\maketitle
\Blinddocument

\end{document}

Ideally, I would like the bold title (first thing on the first page) to be 2cm away from the very top of the page, like the headers on every other page. I have tried playing around with \vspace, even tried using the titling package, but this doesn't work due to some form of package clash (apparently). I know that this document class is rather strict but I really want to carry on using it.

Any form of help or suggestions are very much appreciated.

Answer 1

The \vspace{-1cm} command inside \author is of no use. Just type \space*{-1.2cm}just before \maketitle.

Alternatively you might want to take a look at the titling package, which provides tools to customise the \maketitle command in a clean way.

Unrelated: the hyperref package should be loaded as the last one, with very few exceptions.

\documentclass[11pt,reqno]{amsart}

 %-------Packages-----------------------
\usepackage{amssymb,amsfonts}
\usepackage[all,arc]{xy}
\usepackage{enumerate}
\usepackage{mathrsfs}
\usepackage[a4paper, top=2.8cm, left=2cm, right=2cm, bottom=2cm, showframe]{geometry}
\usepackage{wrapfig}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepgflibrary{arrows}
\usepgflibrary[arrows]
\usetikzlibrary{arrows}
\usetikzlibrary[arrows]
\usetikzlibrary{automata}
\usetikzlibrary[automata]
\usetikzlibrary{positioning}
\usepackage{framed}
\usepackage{multicol}
\usepackage{caption}
\usepackage{subcaption}
\usepackage[english]{babel} %used for this example
\usepackage{blindtext} %used for this example
\usepackage{hyperref}


%--------Theorem Environments----------
\newtheorem{thm}{Theorem}[section]
\newtheorem{cor}[thm]{Corollary}
\newtheorem{prop}[thm]{Proposition}
\newtheorem{lem}[thm]{Lemma}
\newtheorem{conj}[thm]{Conjecture}
\newtheorem{quest}[thm]{Question}

\theoremstyle{definition}
\newtheorem{defn}[thm]{Definition}
\newtheorem{defns}[thm]{Definitions}
\newtheorem{con}[thm]{Construction}
\newtheorem{exmp}[thm]{Example}
\newtheorem{exmps}[thm]{Examples}
\newtheorem{notn}[thm]{Notation}
\newtheorem{notns}[thm]{Notations}
\newtheorem{addm}[thm]{Addendum}
\newtheorem{exer}[thm]{Exercise}

\theoremstyle{remark}
\newtheorem{rem}[thm]{Remark}
\newtheorem{rems}[thm]{Remarks}
\newtheorem{warn}[thm]{Warning}
\newtheorem{sch}[thm]{Scholium}

\makeatletter
\let\c@equation\c@thm
\makeatother
\numberwithin{equation}{section}

\bibliographystyle{plain}

%--------Info----------------------------
\title{Title}
\author{\vspace{-0.5cm}Author\vspace{-1cm}}
%----------------------------------------

\begin{document}

\vspace*{-1.2cm}
\maketitle
\Blinddocument

\end{document} 

Answer 2

another method for countering the space above the title is to nullify the \topskip applied above the title. this is used elsewhere, so the value isn't changed, but a reversing \vspace* is added after it:

\usepackage{etoolbox}
\makeatletter
\patchcmd{\@maketitle}{\global\topskip42\p@\relax}
  {\global\topskip42\p@\relax \vspace*{-38pt}}
  {}{}
\makeatother

it's easy to change this value if you decide you want something slightly different.

the code should be put in your preamble. i suggest at the very top, immediately following the \documentclass line.

Answer 3

I don't find the space is excessive. However, here's an easy way for adjusting the spacing, act where indicated after experimenting with the values.

I removed your hack for sharing the counter between equations and theorems and alike environments to a better one.

Remove the showframe option to geometry for the production version.

\documentclass[11pt,reqno]{amsart}

%-------Packages-----------------------
\usepackage{amssymb,amsfonts}
\usepackage[all,arc]{xy}
\usepackage{enumerate}
\usepackage{mathrsfs}
\usepackage[a4paper, top=2.8cm, left=2cm, right=2cm, bottom=2cm,showframe]{geometry}
\usepackage{wrapfig}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepgflibrary{arrows} 
\usepgflibrary[arrows] 
\usetikzlibrary{arrows}
\usetikzlibrary[arrows]
\usetikzlibrary{automata} 
\usetikzlibrary[automata] 
\usetikzlibrary{positioning}
\usepackage{framed}
\usepackage{multicol}
\usepackage{caption}
\usepackage{subcaption}
\usepackage{etoolbox}
\usepackage{lipsum}      %used for this example
\usepackage{hyperref}


%--------Theorem Environments----------
\numberwithin{equation}{section}
\newtheorem{thm}[equation]{Theorem}
\newtheorem{cor}[equation]{Corollary}
\newtheorem{prop}[equation]{Proposition}
\newtheorem{lem}[equation]{Lemma}
\newtheorem{conj}[equation]{Conjecture}
\newtheorem{quest}[equation]{Question}

\theoremstyle{definition}
\newtheorem{defn}[equation]{Definition}
\newtheorem{defns}[equation]{Definitions}
\newtheorem{con}[equation]{Construction}
\newtheorem{exmp}[equation]{Example}
\newtheorem{exmps}[equation]{Examples}
\newtheorem{notn}[equation]{Notation}
\newtheorem{notns}[equation]{Notations}
\newtheorem{addm}[equation]{Addendum}
\newtheorem{exer}[equation]{Exercise}

\theoremstyle{remark}
\newtheorem{rem}[equation]{Remark}
\newtheorem{rems}[equation]{Remarks}
\newtheorem{warn}[equation]{Warning}
\newtheorem{sch}[equation]{Scholium}

\makeatletter
\patchcmd{\@settitle}
  {\begin{center}}
  {\vspace*{-3\baselineskip}\begin{center}}% <--- adjust the dimension
  {}{}
\patchcmd{\@setauthors}
  {30\p@}
  {20\p@}% <--- adjust the dimension
  {}{}
\patchcmd{\@setauthors}
  {\endtrivlist}
  {\endtrivlist\vspace{-2\baselineskip}}% <--- adjust the dimension
  {}{}
\makeatother

\bibliographystyle{plain}

%--------Info----------------------------
\title{Title}
\author{Author}
%----------------------------------------

\begin{document}

\maketitle

\section{A title}

\lipsum[1]

\begin{thm}
A theorem statement with an equation
\begin{equation}
x=x
\end{equation}
and some text after it.
\end{thm}

\lipsum[2]

\begin{rem}
A remark.
\end{rem}

\lipsum

\end{document}