Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!ukc!tcdcs!swift.cs.tcd.ie!maths.tcd.ie!tim
From: tim@maths.tcd.ie (Timothy Murphy)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: section headings without titles
Summary: I want numbered section headings without titles
Keywords: TeX section format
Message-ID: <1990Oct5.122632.25361@maths.tcd.ie>
Date: 5 Oct 90 12:26:32 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Maths, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
Lines: 33

I was recently TeX-ifying (or rather, LaTeX-ifying) a semi-formal document
(a Society Constitution)
with lots of sub-sections and sub-sub-sections
that were numbered but had no titles, eg
2.4 The Chair may be ejected if ...
With the usual LaTeX styles this came out as
2.4
The Chair may ...

My solution was to use a style file with the following re-definitions:

\def\subsection{\@startsection{subsection}{2}{\z@}{-3.25ex plus -1ex minus 
 -.2ex}{-1.5ex plus -.2ex}{\large\bf}}
\def\subsubsection{\@startsection{subsubsection}{3}{\z@}{-3.25ex plus
 -1ex minus -.2ex}{-1.5ex plus -.2ex}{\normalsize\bf}}

This is identical to the usual definitions,
except that the argument {1.5ex plus .2ex} is 'negatived'.
(It had to be in a style-file, because of the use of @ as a letter.)

My question is, was that very clever of me, or very stupid?
(Don't all shout at once.)
There must be a simpler way to do this.
If not, wouldn't it be more reasonable for LaTeX
*not* to put the section-number on a separate line
if the section-title is empty?


-- 

Timothy Murphy  

e-mail: tim@maths.tcd.ie