How to customise page numbering?

Question

I am currently writing my honours thesis.

The following is a MWE of what I have:

\documentclass[11 pt]{article}
\usepackage[margin = 2.54 cm]{geometry}
\usepackage[doublespacing]{setspace}
\usepackage{parskip}

\begin{document}

\pagestyle{headings}

\section{Motivation}

Blah blah blah.

\newpage

More blah blah blah.

\end{document}

Currently, all of my page numbers appear at the top-right of each page.

However, the guidelines from my university on page numbers are as follows:

"The page number for the first page of each chapter, as well as preliminaries, should appear at the bottom of the page. For the rest of the pages, the page number should appear at the top-right hand corner (2 cm from the top, 2.5 cm from the right)."

Thus, I would like the page number with the page starting the section "Motivation" to appear at the bottom-center of the page. Of course, this should hold for the start of all other sections too but for all other pages, they should adopt the "headings" page style. In particular, if Page 1 is the page with "blah blah blah", then that page number should be at the bottom of the page and centered. If Page 2 is the page with "More blah blah blah", then that page number should be at the top-right of the page.

How can I do this? For example, is there a pre-set style that I can use already?

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated :)

Answer 1

This can be achieved quite easily if you are willing to change your documentclass to report. This will also enable you to use \chapters as the highest level, which seems to be intended by your university:

The page number for the first page of each chapter, as well as preliminaries, should appear at the bottom of the page. For the rest of the pages, the page number should appear at the top-right hand corner (2 cm from the top, 2.5 cm from the right).

You will achieve the wanted behavior using \pagestyle{headings} in your preamble: Pages which start a new chapter will use the plain pagestyle (page number in footer), the others will use headings (page number in header). It is possible to further customize them. If you need more options, maybe fancyhdr package will come in handy.

MWE:

\documentclass{report}

\pagestyle{headings}

\begin{document}
\chapter{Motivation}
Blah.
\newpage
More blah.
\end{document}