HowTo_ChapterNoNewPage

How to prevent chapters from starting a new page

\chapter, \chapter*, \addchap and \addchap* at least cause scrbook and scrreprt to start a new page. So the headline is always on a new page. This behavior should not be changed. By the new page the strongly subdividing meaning of the chapter is to be emphasized. Furthermore, this also makes it easier for the reader to find chapters. It therefore makes sense that chapters start a new page. This is additionally supported by the size of the heading and the distance to the top of the page.

However, there are also documents that do not have any chapters at all, which would justify such a highlighting. In such documents, neither scrbook nor scrreprt should be used, but for example scrartcl. With scrartcl the top level below the part (\part) is the section (\section). A section can also start in the middle of a page. So if you are looking for chapters without a new start of page, you are in fact looking for scrartcl and should simply omit chapters.

By the way, with option titlepage scrartcl also provides a real title page (or several), according to the default of scrreprt and scrbook. Automatic column titles are also possible with scrartcl using \pagestyle{headings}. Only things like \frontmatter, \mainmatter and \backmatter are not provided by scrartcl, but don't really make sense if no real chapters are to be used. Nevertheless, they can be simulated via other statements like \pagenumbering together with the use of \addsec. Thus there is little reason not to use scrartcl if no real chapters are desired.

Sometimes it is also desired to be able to change the behavior of \chapter within a document. This can only be discouraged, as it would be a blatant violation of one of the highest typographic principles. According to this, typesetting should be as consistent as possible, for which it is absolutely necessary that equals are always set equal. Thus, if two sections are to be placed on one page, they should also be set as sections and not as chapters. Of course, it then makes sense to find a common chapter heading for them.

Such a case would be, for example, if the list of figures and the list of tables should be combined on one page because of their brevity. This is very easy in KOMA-Script by using option listof=leveldown and then combining the two directories under a heading \addchap{Tables and Figures} for example. Another example would be that more than one index exists. Again, there is an option to use index=leveldown to adjust the outline level of the index headings. Furthermore, the instructions for the package splitindex describe this problem and a possible solution in detail. However, it is not about setting chapters differently, but - as already mentioned - just not setting an implicit chapter, but a section. So the behavior of the chapter is not changed, but instead of a chapter a real section is created.

If you still insist on formatting chapters more like sections, you should take a closer look at \RedeclareSectionCommand in the KOMA-Script manual. With this you can also change the style of the chapter headings accordingly:

\documentclass{scrbook}

\usepackage{blindtext}

\RedeclareSectionCommand[style=section]{chapter}
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents

\chapter{First Chapter}
\blindtext

\blinddocument
\end{document}

It should be noted, however, that the chapterprefix option no longer leads to a prefix line, but only to a prefix within the heading line.