Page Layout ⇒ Chapter title at the middle of the page

[AdrianM]

Hi and Happy New Year!

How can I put the chapter title at the middle of the page?

I want to write a book with two big sections which I sepparated writing the title of each sections as a chapter on a blank page, added \clearpage after and then started the content using \section.

But I don't want the title of the chapter as default, a few cm from the top of the page, it's ugly, I want to put it at the middle of the page. How can I do that?

And another little thing: for some unknown reason, the text belonging to a section is centered by LATEX, not by me. How can I force it to be stretched, unaligned, like regular text? (I didn't see anything wrong in my code to result in the centering, so I want to force it to be justified) I tried \flushleft, but it's uneven at the right side...you know.

Thanks for both.

All the best in 2011!

[frabjous]

Sounds to me like you ought to be using the \part command, rather than \chapter, for the big divisions in your book. It puts the title of the part division centered on its own page.

You can customize all these things with the titlesec package. I think it would be best for you to try working out some solutions for what you want by reading its manual, but do ask again here if you need help with it.

[AdrianM]

It did the trick, thank you.