How to change the formatting/font of page numbers?

Question

So, I'm using the article class, and I'd like to make the page number smaller, and set it in a different font. I don't need to create a new pagestyle, necessarily, and I'm hesitant to do so without understanding the ramifications.

Answer 1

Thanks for the suggestion to use fancyhdr/redefine page styles. From the fancyhdr manual:

\fancypagestyle{plain}{%
\fancyhf{} % clear all header and footer fields
\fancyfoot[C]{\sffamily\fontsize{9pt}{9pt}\selectfont\thepage} % except the center
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}
\renewcommand{\footrulewidth}{0pt}}
\pagestyle{plain}

Answer 2

You could use a KOMA-script class (e.g. scrartcl instead of article) and add the following to the preamble:

\addtokomafont{pagenumber}{\small\sffamily}

I initially recommended to redefine the \thepage command but, as Lev Bishop has pointed out, this has adverse effects and shouldn't be done.

Answer 3

The correct way to achieve this is to make a new page style. As this FAQ answer discusses, redefining the \thepage will only cause problems with all the places page numbers are used (\pageref, table of contents, hyperref labels, etc, etc). Such changes will also not survive past a book-class change from \frontmatter to \mainmatter and so on.

Changing the pagestyle is easy enough with the fancyhdr package.

Answer 4

EDIT: As Lev kindly pointed out in his comment about it breaking various things, you definitely shouldn't think of this:

---

I can't help you with your font unless you mention which font you'd like. However, this code should give you a start:

\let\oldthepage\thepage
\renewcommand*\thepage{\small{\ttfamily-- \oldthepage\ --}}