Vertically centering a title page

Question

I'm trying to vertically center a title on a custom-sized page with latex. I've written the following code, but for some reason it doesn't center. Could someone please point me to what's wrong with it?

Thanks!

\documentclass{article}
\setlength{\pdfpagewidth}{88.184mm}
\setlength{\pdfpageheight}{113.854mm}

\usepackage[margin=0.5cm, paperwidth=88.184mm, paperheight=113.854mm]{geometry}

\title{[[title]]}
\date{[[date]]}
\author{[[author]]}

\begin{document}
    \vspace{\fill}
    \maketitle
    \vspace{\fill}

    \newpage

    [[text]]
\end{document}

score 50 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 29 '10 at 15:51

There are two small bugs in your code.

First, if you want the \vspace to work at the beginning or end of a page, you should use the starred version (\vspace*).

This would work, but \maketitle is a pretty complicated macro, and if used like in your example, it just puts the title at the second page. You can use the titlepage environment, which gives you much more command over how the title page looks like -- including the spacing. For example, you could use the following code:

\documentclass{article}
\setlength{\pdfpagewidth}{88.184mm}
\setlength{\pdfpageheight}{113.854mm}

\usepackage[margin=0.5cm, paperwidth=88.184mm, paperheight=113.854mm]{geometry}

\begin{document}
  \begin{titlepage}
    \vspace*{\fill}
    \begin{center}
      {Huge [[title]]}\\[0.5cm]
      {Large [[author}\\[0.4cm]
      [[date]]
    \end{center}
    \vspace*{\fill}
  \end{titlepage}

  [[text]]
\end{document}

Alexey Malistov · Answer 2 · 2010-06-29T15:53:58.290

20

\null  % Empty line
\nointerlineskip  % No skip for prev line
\vfill
\let\snewpage \newpage
\let\newpage \relax
\maketitle
\let \newpage \snewpage
\vfill 
\break % page break

edited Jun 29 '10 at 15:53

answered Jun 29 '10 at 15:48

Alexey Malistov

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2

This is excellent. I have created approximately 50 documents (which were relatively important) and used this code; worked every time. – alexyorke Feb 07 '14 at 23:57

score 3 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 04 '14 at 14:20

3

If you want to make everything work even with \maketitle put your \vspace*{\fill} inside the first and the last attribute, exp:

 \title{**\vspace*{\fill}**[[title]]}

 \date{[[date]]}

 \author{[[author]]**\vspace*{\fill}**[[}

 \begin{document}

    \maketitle

    \newpage

   [[text]]

\end{document}

edited Jun 04 '14 at 14:20

Chris

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answered Mar 19 '13 at 10:40

Fadi

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1

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 01 '18 at 14:23

As in the answer by finrod, \maketitle is a pretty complicated macro, this is why I didn't feel like overwriting it myself (\renewcommand\maketitle{...). Nevertheless, copying, pasting and editing lines 170-201 of article.cls documentclass, I could add a new one to customize (\newcommand\mymaketitle{...) as follows:

\documentclass{article}
\setlength{\pdfpagewidth}{88.184mm}
\setlength{\pdfpageheight}{113.854mm}

\usepackage[margin=0.5cm, paperwidth=88.184mm, paperheight=113.854mm]{geometry}

\title{Title}
\date{Date}
\author{Author}

\makeatletter
\newcommand\mymaketitle{%
  \begin{titlepage}
    \null\vfil\vskip 40\p@
    \begin{center}
      {\LARGE \@title \par}
      \vskip 2.5em
      {\large \lineskip .75em \@author \par}
      \vskip 1.5em
      {\large \@date \par}
    \end{center}\par
    \@thanks
    \vfil\null
  \end{titlepage}
}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
\mymaketitle

Text
\end{document}

The output:

Vertically centering a title page

4 Answers4