Start new page with each section

Question

I would like to start each section on a new page. Is adding the following to my preamble this the preferred method, or a hack?

\let\stdsection\section
\renewcommand\section{\newpage\stdsection}

Answer 1

With an uptodate TeX distribution you can use

\AddToHook{cmd/section/before}{\clearpage}

Example:

\documentclass{article}
\AddToHook{cmd/section/before}{\clearpage}
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
Text
\section{Title}
Text
\subsection{Title}
Text
\subsection{Title}
Text
\section{Title}
Text
\end{document}

Answer 2

The titlesec package allows to do this with just

\newcommand{\sectionbreak}{\clearpage}

It's cleaner than what you were doing and the package also allows to completely customize sections. Here's a fully compilable code sample showing how it works:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{titlesec}
\newcommand{\sectionbreak}{\clearpage}

\begin{document}

Text

\section{Title}
Text
\subsection{Title}
Text
\subsection{Title}
Text

\section{Title}
Text

\end{document}

Answer 3

Obligatory ConTeXt solution:

\setuphead[section][page=yes] % or page=right

Answer 4

The accepted answer in that form won't work as expected in LyX. This solution causes problems when the document includes a ToC and hyperref support: It makes the paging of the hyperref links be off-sync with the document paging (e.g. clicking on Section 3 which is on p4 will take you to p3 instead).

As mentioned in the comments, this happens because by default LyX is loading hyperref before titlesec. To work around this you can use \newcommand{\sectionbreak}{\clearpage\phantomsection}.

Alternatively, in LyX, you can include in Document Settings > Local Layout:

Provides hyperref

And then load hyperref manually in the LaTeX preamble, like this:

\usepackage{titlesec}
\newcommand{\sectionbreak}{\clearpage}
\usepackage{hyperref}

Answer 5

Another solution, which uses the sectsty package:

\usepackage{sectsty}
\sectionfont{\clearpage}

Answer 6

An alternative solution is to enclose each section in an \include, because \include does an automatic \clearpage before. No preamble necessary!

Answer 7

I used to use the \renewcommand{\sectionbreak}{\clearpage} solution, but it stopped working when I wanted to change the font color using secsty...

so had to use this instead:

\usepackage{etoolbox}
\preto{\section}{%
  \ifnum\value{section}=0 \else\clearpage\fi
}

the conditional is there to keep it from putting the first section of a new chapter on a new page. If you want also the first section of each chapter on a new page you can simply use

\preto{\section}{\clearpage} with etoolbox or \sectionfont{\clearpage} with secsty

Answer 8

I would rather use what Philippe Goutet has already mentioned.

\usepackage{titlesec}
\newcommand{\sectionbreak}{\clearpage}

These are very convenient and save you the effort of typing \clearpage at the end of each section. Needless to mentioned that you can apply the same to \subsection and \subsubsection. You can also manage the spacing between the section title and the first paragraph.

Perhaps you should take a look at the documentation if you're interested.

Answer 9

For me, only a combination of the previous answers works correctly:

\usepackage{sectsty}
\sectionfont{\clearpage\phantomsection}

(The same without \phantomsection causes refs point to incorrect page. And \newcommand{\sectionbreak}{\clearpage} causes an error with pandoc, with or without \phantomsection.)