
18 II. THE DOCUMENT
II.1.3. Page formats
There are options for setting the contents of each page in a single column (as is usual) or
in two columns (as in most dictionaries). This is set by the options
onecolumn twocolumn
and the default is onecolumn.
There is also an option to specify w hether the document will be finally printed on just
one side of each paper or on both sides. The names of the options are
oneside twoside
One of the differences is that with the twoside option, page numbers are printed on
the right on odd-numbered pages and on the left on even numbered pages, so that when
these printed back to back, the numbers are always on the outside, for better visibility.
(Note that L
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X has no control over the actual printing. It only makes the formats for
different types of printing.) The default is oneside for article, report and letter and
twoside for book.
In the report and book class there is a provision to specify the different chapters (we
will soon see how). Chapters always begin on a new page, leaving blank space in the
previous page, if necessary. With the book class there is the additional restriction that
chapters begin only on odd-numbered pages, leaving an entire page blank, if need b e.
Such behavior is controlled by the options,
openany openright
The default is openany for reportclass (so that chapters begin on “any” new page)
and openright for the book class (so that chapters begin only on new right, that is, odd
numbered, page).
There is also a provision in L
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T
E
X for formatting the “title” (the name of t he docu-
ment, author(s) and so on) of a document with special typographic consideration. In the
article class, this part of the document is printed along with the text following on the
first page, while for report an d book, a separate title page is printed. These are set by the
options
notitlepage titlepage
As noted above, the default is notitlepage for article and titlepage for report and
book. As with the other options, the default behavior can be overruled by explicitly
specifying an option with the documentclass command.
There are some other options to the documentclass which we will discuss in the rele-
vant context.
II.2. PA GE STYLE
Having decided on the overall appearance of the document through the \documentclass
command with its various options, we next see how we ca n set the style for the individual
pages. In L
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T
E
X parlance, each page has a “head” and “foot” usually containing such
information as the current page number or the current chapter or section. Just what goes
where is set by the command
\pagestyle{...}
where the mandatory argument can be an y one of the following styles
plain empty headings myheadings
The behavior pertaining to each of these is given below: