\maketitle (LaTeX2e unofficial reference manual (November 2018))

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### 18.1 `\maketitle`

Synopsis:

    \maketitle

Generate a title. In the standard classes the title appears on a separate page, except in the `article` class where it is at the top of the first page. (See Document class options for information about the `titlepage` document class option.)

This example shows `\maketitle` appearing in its usual place, immediately after `\begin{document}`.

    \documentclass{article}
    \title{Constructing a Nuclear Reactor Using Only Coconuts}
    \author{Jonas Grumby\thanks{%
        With the support of a Ginger Grant from the Roy Hinkley Society.} \\
      Skipper, \textit{Minnow}
      \and
      Willy Gilligan\thanks{%
        Thanks to the Mary Ann Summers foundation
        and to Thurston and Lovey Howell.}           \\
      Mate, \textit{Minnow}
      }
    \date{1964-Sep-26}
    \begin{document}
    \maketitle
    Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip.
    That started from this tropic port, aboard this tiny ship. The mate was
    a mighty sailin' man, the Skipper brave and sure. Five passengers set
    sail that day for a three hour tour. A three hour tour.
      ...

You tell LaTeX the information used to produce the title by making the following declarations. These must come before the `\maketitle`, either in the preamble or in the document body.

`\author{name1 \and name2 \and ...}`

  Required. Declare the document author or authors. The argument is a list of authors separated by `\and` commands. To separate lines within a single author’s entry, for instance to give the author’s institution or address, use a double backslash, `\\`. If you omit the `\author` declaration then you get ‘`LaTeX Warning: No \author given`’.

`\date{text}`

  Optional. Declare text to be the document’s date. The text doesn’t need to be in a date format; it can be any text at all. If you omit `\date` then LaTeX uses the current date (see \today). To have no date, instead use `\date{}`.

`\thanks{text}`

  Optional. Produce a footnote. You can use it in the author information for acknowledgements as illustrated above, but you can also use it in the title, or any place a footnote makes sense. It can be any text at all so you can use it for any purpose, such as to print an email address.

`\title{text}`

  Required. Declare text to be the title of the document. Get line breaks inside text with a double backslash, `\\`. If you omit the `\title` declaration then you get ‘`LaTeX Error: No \title given`’.

To make your own title page, see titlepage. You can either create this as a one-off or you can include it as part of a renewed `\maketitle` command. (Many publishers will provide a class to use in place of `article` that formats the title according to their house requirements.)

Unofficial LaTeX2e reference manual