How to modify the size of the space before a chapter title in LaTeX?

Question

I have been working with tetex on Zenwalk and now that I compile my report with texlive, the behavior is a bit different.

I would like my bibliography to fit in one page like before and I just need to change the space before the title of the bibliographie chapter.

Do you know how I can manage that?

Thanks

Answer 1

If you just want to reduce the top margin space of the reference page you can set a \vspace*{} command before your \bibliography{}. This will force the reference page to be adjusted. Eg:

\newpage
\vspace*{-2cm}
\bibliographystyle{/..../bst-files/econometrica_v2}
\bibliography{/home/.../econometrics}

Answer 2

The easiest is to use the titlesec package. It provides macros for defining the appearance of sectioning titles.

The hacker solution is to redefine the macro from book.cls to your liking. The original looks like so:

\def\@makechapterhead#1{%
  \vspace*{50\p@}%
  {\parindent \z@ \raggedright \normalfont
    \ifnum \c@secnumdepth >\m@ne
      \if@mainmatter
        \huge\bfseries \@chapapp\space \thechapter
        \par\nobreak
        \vskip 20\p@
      \fi
    \fi
    \interlinepenalty\@M
    \Huge \bfseries #1\par\nobreak
    \vskip 40\p@
  }}

Just changing those vspaces of vskips might be enough for you.