[texhax] how to redefine chapter

[tom sgouros]

The book version of \chapter* calls on \@makeschapterhead, which is
defined like this:

\def\@makeschapterhead#1{%
  \vspace*{50\p@}%
  {\parindent \z@ \raggedright
    \normalfont
    \interlinepenalty\@M
    \Huge \bfseries  #1\par\nobreak
    \vskip 40\p@
  }}

The \vspace* at the top is your culprit.  Remove it or increase it or
whatever you want.  You'll have to put your redefinition inside a
\makeatletter...\makeatother pair or inside a new class file.

This kind of stuff is pretty easily found by grepping through the base
LaTeX class files.  I suspect that somewhere there's a book.dtx, too,
but I don't know for sure.

 -tom

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