LaTeX has some predetermined styles that change the way the header and the footer are displayed. The footer and the header can also be customized to fit any particular layout. This article explains how.
The information displayed in the footer and the header of a document depends on the page style currently active, these page styles are more notorious in the book document class:
\documentclass[a4paper,12pt,twoside]{book}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\pagestyle{headings}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Sample Chapter}
\section{New section}
Hello, here is some text without a meaning. This text should
show what a printed text will look like at this place. If you
read this text, you will get no information. Really? Is there
no information? Is there a difference between this text and some
nonsense like ``Huardest gefburn? Kjift " not at all!...
\end{document}
The command \pagestyle{headings}
sets the page style called headings to the current document. You can see more page styles in the next section
The standard page styles are invoked in LaTeX by means of the command:
\pagestyle{''style''}
\pagestyle{myheadings}
The myheadings pagestyle displays the page number on top of the page in the outer corner.
There are other three page styles:
empty
: Both the header and footer are cleared (blank) in this page style.plain
: This is the default style. The header is empty and the footer contains page numbers in the centre.myheadings
: As shown in the introduction,The footer is empty in this page style. The header contains the page number on right side (on even pages) or on left side (on odd pages) along with other user-supplied information; there is an exception for the first page of each chapter, where the footer contains centred page number while the header is blank.Sometimes is convenient to specify the page style only for the current page. For instance, to leave a intentionally blank page or to remove the header and footer from the current chapter page:
\chapter{Sample Chapter}
\thispagestyle{empty}
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do
eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim
}ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi
ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in
reprehenderit in voluptate velit es...
\end{document}
Of course, you can replace empty for any of the styles mentioned in the previous section
Styles can be modified beyond the standard layouts by means of fancyhdr. Below is an example.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhf{}
\rhead{Overleaf}
\lhead{Guides and tutorials}
\rfoot{Page \thepage}
\begin{document}
\section{First Section}
Hello, here is some text without a meaning. This
text should show what a printed text will look like at
this place. If you read this text, you will get no information.
Really? Is there no information? Is there a difference between
this ...
\end{document}
To customize the footer and header in your document first import the package fancyhdr with
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
After that, the "fancy" style is set by \pagestyle{fancy}
. The command \fancyhf{}
clears the header and footer, otherwise the elements of the default "plain" page style will appear.
Below, a description of the rest of the commands and a few more whose usage is similar.
\rhead{Overleaf}
\lhead{Guides and tutorials}
\chead{ }
\rfoot{Page \thepage}
\thepage
on the right side of the footer. See the reference guide for a list of commands that automatically generate content (Section numbers, chapters and so on).\lfoot{ }
\cfoot{ }
Open an example of the fancyhdr package in Overleaf
If your document is double-sided, for example a book, and you need to customize the header and the footer, the recommended commands in this case are \fancyhead
and \fancyfoot
with several selectors passed as parameters. Let's see:
\documentclass[a4paper,12pt,twoside]{book}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhf{}
\fancyhead[LE,RO]{Overleaf}
\fancyhead[RE,LO]{Guides and tutorials}
\fancyfoot[CE,CO]{\leftmark}
\fancyfoot[LE,RO]{\thepage}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Using different page styles}
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing ...
The selectors that can be passed, inside brackets, to the commands \fancyhead
and \fancyfoot
are:
For instance, \fancyhead[LE,RO]{Overleaf}
will print the text "Overleaf" on the Left side of the header for Even pages, and the Right side for Odd pages.
For more information on the command \leftmark
and \thepage
used in the previous example see the reference guide.
Open an example of the fancyhdr package in Overleaf
When you are using fancyhdr in your document, there are two decorative lines on both the header and the footer, the latter has 0pt thickness and hence is not visible. It's easy to change that:
\documentclass[a4paper,12pt,twoside]{book}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhf{}
\fancyhead[LE,RO]{Overleaf}
\fancyhead[RE,LO]{Guides and tutorials}
\fancyfoot[CE,CO]{\leftmark}
\fancyfoot[LE,RO]{\thepage}
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{2pt}
\renewcommand{\footrulewidth}{1pt}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Using different page styles}
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing ...
There are two additional lines in this example:
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{2pt}
\renewcommand{\footrulewidth}{1pt}
Open an example of the fancyhdr package in Overleaf
The following commands can be used in the headers and footers to add custom information
\thepage
\thechapter
\thesection
\chaptername
\leftmark
\rightmark
For more information see: