Cfrgtkky

I would simply like to center the title of the table of contents in my "book" document.

I just added dot leaders to the table of contents, and this appeared to be best accomplished by forgoing the tocloft package and instead using the dottedcontents command of the titlesec companion package, titletoc, like so:

dottedcontents{chapter}[0em]{vspace{2.1ex}}{0em}{0.5pc}

Introducing tocloft settings in order to center the TOC title causes what appears to be a vertical placement/spacing problem that I'm not sure how to correct (this is described in detail in my comments to Peter's answer below). I would therefore like to avoid using the tocloft package if possible.

One way to approach the centering task would be to add centering to the chapter titleformat command of the titlesec package:

usepackage{titlesec}

titleformat{chapter}[display]{centeringLargebfseries}{}{}{}

However this centers all chapter titles, and I don't want this.

So, my question is: what is the simplest way to center the table of contents title without affecting other chapter titles and without using tocloft?

Here is a near minimal example (with my attempts at using the tocloft package omitted):

documentclass{book}



usepackage{titlesec}

titleformat{chapter}[display]{Largebfseries}{}{}{}



usepackage{indentfirst}



usepackage{titletoc}

dottedcontents{chapter}[0em]{vspace{2.1ex}}{0em}{0.5pc}



begin{document}



tableofcontents

vspace{24pt}



chapter*{Left-Justified Chapter 1}

addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Left-Justified Chapter 1}



Some indented text.



chapter*{Left-Justified Chapter 2}

addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Left-Justified Chapter 2}



More indented text.



end{document}

You can declare a titleformat within a group, after begin{document}.

Unrelated: with the companion package titletoc, you have a much simpler way to format the entries in the table of contents, with the dottedcontents command.

documentclass{book}



usepackage{titlesec, titletoc, xcolor}

titleformat{chapter}[display]{Largebfseries}{}{}{}



usepackage{indentfirst}



dottedcontents{chapter}[3.8em]{vspace{2ex}}{2.3em}{0.8pc}



begin{document}



begingroup

titleformat{chapter}[block]{Largebfseriesfilcenter}{color{red}}{}{}

tableofcontents

vspace{24pt}

endgroup



chapter*{Left-Justified Chapter 1}

addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Left-Justified Chapter 1}



Some indented text.



chapter*{Left-Justified Chapter 2}

addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Left-Justified Chapter 2}



More indented text.



end{document} 

By default the tocloft package uses the standard class's (book, report, article) settings for the ToC, LoF and LoT. The following (less any typos) is a solution to your problem using tocloft.

documentclass{book}

usepackage{tocloft}



%% center Contents title

renewcommand{cfttoctitlefont}{hfillHugebfseries}

renewcommand{cftaftertoctitle}{hfill}



%% add dot leaders to chapters

renewcommand{cftchapdotsep}{cftdotsep}



begin{document}

tableofcontents

chapter{First chapter}

section{A section}

subsection{A subsection}

end{document}

This makes no changes to the indentation and vertical placement of the entries.