Sections in LaTeX

LaTeX structures documents with \section, \subsection, and deeper heading commands — all automatically numbered.

Quick Answer

latex
\section{Introduction}
\subsection{Background}
\subsubsection{Prior Work}

Heading Hierarchy

LaTeX provides seven levels of sectioning. The available levels depend on the document class.

CommandLevelAvailable in
\part{}-1book, report
\chapter{}0book, report
\section{}1all classes
\subsection{}2all classes
\subsubsection{}3all classes
\paragraph{}4all classes
\subparagraph{}5all classes

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Unnumbered Sections

Add a * to suppress the number and exclude from the table of contents.

latex
\section*{Acknowledgements}
\subsection*{Note on Notation}

% To add an unnumbered section to the TOC manually:
\section*{Acknowledgements}
\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Acknowledgements}

Short Title for TOC/Header

Provide an optional short title in brackets for the table of contents and running headers.

latex
\section[Short Title]{Very Long Section Title That Would Overflow}

Numbering Control

latex
% Set section counter manually:
\setcounter{section}{4}  % next \section will be 5

% Control numbering depth (e.g., don't number subsubsections):
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{2}

% Control TOC depth:
\setcounter{tocdepth}{2}

Related Topics

Table of Contents →Cross-References →New Page →Footnotes →

More LaTeX Topics

Bold TextItalic TextUnderline TextStrikethroughFont SizeText ColorText AlignmentHyperlinksTable of ContentsNew PageNew LineMarginsLine SpacingPage NumbersHeaders & FootersMinipageTablesFigures & ImagesListsEquationsFractionsSquare RootSubscript & SuperscriptSummationIntegralMatrixGreek LettersArrowsTilde (~)Delta (δ, Δ)Hash (#)BibliographyCross-ReferencesFootnotes