LaTeX Document Structure and Typesetting

This chapter solves the "skeleton" problem of a document: how to arrange the title, how to divide the sections, how to generate the table of contents, and how to set page margins, headers, and footers.

The feature of these settings is: configure once, and the entire document takes effect automatically—this is exactly the core advantage of LaTeX for handling long documents.

Title, Author, and Date

Three steps: declare the information in the preamble, then call \maketitle in the body to render it.

Sectioning Commands and Automatic Numbering

Sections are the basic units of a structured document. LaTeX uses a set of commands to express the hierarchy, and all numbering is automatic.

Two things best demonstrate the value of "automatic": first, when you insert a new section in the middle, the subsequent numbers are automatically shifted; second, adding an asterisk to a command (e.g., \section*{...}) means it is not numbered and is not included in the table of contents.

Compiled output: note the automatically generated numbers 1, 1.1, 2.1.1, and the footnote at the bottom of the page:

\footnote{footnote text} places a number at the current location and sets the content at the bottom of the current page; the numbering is continuous throughout the document. Do not nest another \footnote inside a footnote—that is asking for trouble.

Table of Contents Generation

The table of contents requires only one command: \tableofcontents. It scans all the sectioning commands in the document and automatically generates a table of contents with page numbers.

The page numbers in the table of contents are passed through the .aux file, so after adding a section the table of contents will not be correct immediately; just compile again (the same old issue mentioned in Part 2).

To control the depth of the table of contents, set it in the preamble: \setcounter{tocdepth}{2} means only entries down to subsection are included; combined with \setcounter{secnumdepth}{2}, you can also control down to which level sections are numbered in the body.

Page Setup: The geometry Package

Page parameters such as margins and paper size are uniformly managed by the geometry package.

Both methods produce exactly the same effect; choose either one. Note that package options are always written in square brackets [ ]—putting options inside curly braces { } is a common beginner mistake.

Domestic theses commonly use "even-odd symmetric binding": adding bindingoffset=1cm reserves an extra 1 cm for the binding edge.

Headers and Footers: The fancyhdr Package

fancyhdr divides both the header and the footer into three slots—left, center, and right—and you can fill in whatever you want.

Full-page result (header left shows "2 Page Layout", header right shows "Page 1"; footer center shows the custom text):

\leftmark and \rightmark are two "dynamic bookmarks". When typesetting each page, LaTeX automatically records the current section name, writes it into the corresponding bookmark, and the header updates accordingly.

Page Break and Line Break Control

Use \\ for a line break within a paragraph (Part 3); for page-level breaks, there are two commands.

Do not use manual \newpage frequently just to "align" pages—let LaTeX paginate automatically, so the document does not become completely misaligned when edited. Use manual page breaks only at structural breakpoints, such as after the table of contents or between chapters.

Summary