Author before title in the title page of article class

Question

\maketitle in the article class prints the title above the author but I want to reverse that and print the author above the title. Any suggestions?

\title{Can you find the solution?}
\author{you}

\begin{document}
\maketitle
\end{document}

There's, of course, this solution but it is far from pretty

\begingroup
    \centering
    \large You

    \LARGE Can you find the solution?
\endgroup

There's also this solution whereby I guess I would simply replace date with author but there seems to be a lot of additional styling embedded in there that are not necessary in my case.

Answer 1

Per its definition in the article document class, if the titlepage option is not set, the \maketitle macro eventually calls the \@maketitle macro which, in turn, is defined as follows:

\def\@maketitle{%
  \newpage
  \null
  \vskip 2em%
  \begin{center}%
  \let \footnote \thanks
    {\LARGE \@title \par}%
    \vskip 1.5em%
    {\large
      \lineskip .5em%
      \begin{tabular}[t]{c}%
        \@author
      \end{tabular}\par}%
    \vskip 1em%
    {\large \@date}%
  \end{center}%
  \par
  \vskip 1.5em}

Note, in particular, the instructions \@title, \@author, and \@date instructions, and observe that they're contained in TeX groups for which \LARGE, \large, and \large are in effect.

To force LaTeX to typeset the author-related information before the title-related information, you could redefine \@maketitle as follows:

\makeatletter
\renewcommand\@maketitle{%
  \newpage
  \null
  \vskip 2em%
  \begin{center}%
  \let \footnote \thanks
    {\large
      \lineskip .5em%
      \begin{tabular}[t]{c}%
        \@author
      \end{tabular}\par}%
    \vskip 1.5em%
    {\LARGE \@title \par}%
    \vskip 2.5em%
    {\large \@date}%
  \end{center}%
  \par
  \vskip 1.5em}
\makeatother

Note the four \vskip directives. Naturally, you're free to change their arguments to suit your tastes.

A full MWE -- screenshot not necessary, I believe:

\documentclass{article}
\makeatletter
\renewcommand\@maketitle{%
  \newpage
  \null
  \vskip 2em%
  \begin{center}%
  \let \footnote \thanks
    {\large
      \lineskip .5em%
      \begin{tabular}[t]{c}%
        \@author
      \end{tabular}\par}%
    \vskip 1.5em%
    {\LARGE \@title \par}%
    \vskip 2.5em%
    {\large \@date}%
  \end{center}%
  \par
  \vskip 1.5em}
\makeatother

\author{Author}
\title{Title}
\date{Date}

\begin{document}
\maketitle
\end{document}

---

---

If, on the other hand, the titlepage option is set, the \maketitle macro does not invoke a subsidiary macro called \@maketitle. In that case, it's necessary to redefine the \maketitle macro directly, say as follows:

  \makeatletter
  \renewcommand\maketitle{\begin{titlepage}%
  \let\footnotesize\small
  \let\footnoterule\relax
  \let \footnote \thanks
  \null\vfil
  \vskip 60\p@
  \begin{center}%
    {\large
     \lineskip .75em%
      \begin{tabular}[t]{c}%
        \@author
      \end{tabular}\par}%
    \vskip 3em%
    {\LARGE \@title \par}%
    \vskip 3em%
    {\large \@date \par}%      
  \end{center}\par
  \@thanks
  \vfil\null
  \end{titlepage}%
  \setcounter{footnote}{0}%
  \global\let\thanks\relax
  \global\let\maketitle\relax
  \global\let\@thanks\@empty
  \global\let\@author\@empty
  \global\let\@date\@empty
  \global\let\@title\@empty
  \global\let\title\relax
  \global\let\author\relax
  \global\let\date\relax
  \global\let\and\relax
}
\makeatother