Many books, theses and reports are written in LaTeX using the report or book document classes. Often, the authors make use of the default chapter style. There are, however, a great number of alternative styles available, some of which being very fancy or playful. This post is a collection of alternative chapter styles available, some as packages, others simply in form of LaTeX code.
Default chapter style
The default chapter style is often used in (academic) books and theses. Here is an example:
\documentclass{report}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Default Chapter Heading}
\end{document}
Package titlesec
The titlesec package allows basic changes to the standard chapter style, including setting the font style and size or placement of the title. You can do great things with titlesec package and the titleformat command in particular, just be creative (and let me know below)!
Here is a neat example:
\documentclass{report}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{titlesec, blindtext, color}
\definecolor{gray75}{gray}{0.75}
\newcommand{\hsp}{\hspace{20pt}}
\titleformat{\chapter}[hang]{\Huge\bfseries}{\thechapter\hsp\textcolor{gray75}{|}\hsp}{0pt}{\Huge\bfseries}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Less is More}
\blindtext
\end{document}
See the documentation for more details.
Package fncychap
The fncychap package has a nice set of predefined chapter styles. The style is set through the optional argument when loading the package. Available styles include: Sonny, Lenny, Glenn, Conny, Rejne, Bjarne, and Bjornstrup. The package documentation has examples for all available styles. The package will use the LaTeX default chapter style in case the optional argument is not set (i.e. \usepackage{fncychap}).
\documentclass{report}
%Options: Sonny, Lenny, Glenn, Conny, Rejne, Bjarne, Bjornstrup
\usepackage[Sonny]{fncychap}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Sonny}
\end{document}
Examples of Glenn and Bjornstrup chapter styles provided from the fncychap package:
Chapter styles with memoir
The memoir document class is more flexible in terms of chapter styles than report or book.
I will not go into detail since there is extensive documentation on the memoir document class (see page 83 onwards). Furthermore, there is additional documentation describing the memoir chapter styles including code examples and output. Below you’ll find one of the examples taken from that document named hansen.
\documentclass{memoir}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{kpfonts}
\setSingleSpace{1.1}
\SingleSpacing
\usepackage{xcolor,calc, blindtext}
\definecolor{chaptercolor}{gray}{0.8}
% helper macros
\newcommand\numlifter[1]{\raisebox{-2cm}[0pt][0pt]{\smash{#1}}}
\newcommand\numindent{\kern37pt}
\newlength\chaptertitleboxheight
\makechapterstyle{hansen}{
\renewcommand\printchaptername{\raggedleft}
\renewcommand\printchapternum{%
\begingroup%
\leavevmode%
\chapnumfont%
\strut%
\numlifter{\thechapter}%
\numindent%
\endgroup%
}
\renewcommand*{\printchapternonum}{%
\vphantom{\begingroup%
\leavevmode%
\chapnumfont%
\numlifter{\vphantom{9}}%
\numindent%
\endgroup}
\afterchapternum}
\setlength\midchapskip{0pt}
\setlength\beforechapskip{0.5\baselineskip}
\setlength{\afterchapskip}{3\baselineskip}
\renewcommand\chapnumfont{%
\fontsize{4cm}{0cm}%
\bfseries%
\sffamily%
\color{chaptercolor}%
}
\renewcommand\chaptitlefont{%
\normalfont%
\huge%
\bfseries%
\raggedleft%
}%
\settototalheight\chaptertitleboxheight{%
\parbox{\textwidth}{\chaptitlefont \strut bg\\bg\strut}}
\renewcommand\printchaptertitle[1]{%
\parbox[t][\chaptertitleboxheight][t]{\textwidth}{%
%\microtypesetup{protrusion=false}% add this if you use microtype
\chaptitlefont\strut ##1\strut}%
}}
\chapterstyle{hansen}
\aliaspagestyle{chapter}{empty} % just to save some space
\begin{document}
\chapter{Hansen Memoir Chapter Style}
\blindtext
\end{document}
Styling the chapter
Henrik Stuart wrote this article in 2007 with a series of great chapter styles. They are also based on the memoir document class and the PGF/TikZ package. Here is an example that I like a lot, simply beautiful!
\documentclass{memoir}
\usepackage{tikz, blindtext}
\makechapterstyle{box}{
\renewcommand*{\printchaptername}{}
\renewcommand*{\chapnumfont}{\normalfont\sffamily\huge\bfseries}
\renewcommand*{\printchapternum}{
\flushright
\begin{tikzpicture}
\draw[fill,color=black] (0,0) rectangle (2cm,2cm);
\draw[color=white] (1cm,1cm) node { \chapnumfont\thechapter };
\end{tikzpicture}
}
\renewcommand*{\chaptitlefont}{\normalfont\sffamily\Huge\bfseries}
\renewcommand*{\printchaptertitle}[1]{\flushright\chaptitlefont##1}
}
\chapterstyle{box}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Fancy chapter with TikZ}
\blindtext
\end{document}
A few more resources worth checking out
I found a discussion on tex.SX quite enlightening with lots of rather fancy chapter style examples.
This greatly colored example is another chapter style based on PGF/TikZ and titlesec. You can get the code and screenshots from texblog.net or texample.
Did I forget anything? Drop me a comment.