Removing “Chapter” from chapter headings, change font and spacing, and center

Question

I’m using the book style in LaTeX. I want my chapter headings to look like this:

      1
 Great Chapter

It should be in the sans-serif and bold font, centered, and I want to be able to customize the spacing before and after the heading, and also customize the spacing between the “1” and the “Great Chapter.” How can I do this in LaTeX?

Answer 1

The titlesec package can facilitate all of this.

From the titlesec package

 \titlespacing{command}{left spacing}{before spacing}{after spacing}[right]

How to read {12pt plus 4pt minus 2pt}

• 12pt is what we would like the spacing to be
• plus 4pt means that TeX can stretch it by at most 4pt
• minus 2pt means that TeX can shrink it by at most 2pt

This is one example of the concept of, 'glue', in TeX; it may seem strange to use the word 'glue' for a stretchable space, but to quote Knuth (The TeXbook)

But whenever the author has suggested changing TeX's terminology, numerous people have said that they like the word "glue" in spite of its inappropriateness; so the original name has stuck.

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage[explicit]{titlesec}

% custom chapter
\titleformat{\chapter}[display]
{\filcenter\LARGE\bfseries\sffamily}
{\thechapter\\[2cm]% spacing between number and Great chapter
#1}
{1pc}
{\Huge}
% From the titlesec package
% \titlespacing{command}{left spacing}{before spacing}{after spacing}[right]
% spacing: how to read {12pt plus 4pt minus 2pt}
%           12pt is what we would like the spacing to be
%           plus 4pt means that TeX can stretch it by at most 4pt
%           minus 2pt means that TeX can shrink it by at most 2pt
%       This is one example of the concept of, 'glue', in TeX
\titlespacing{\chapter}{0pt}{*4}{-0.1cm}
\begin{document}

\chapter{Great chapter}
\lipsum
\end{document}