Troubleshooting
Headers appearing on chapter-opening pages
How you'd notice this
The book title or chapter title running header shows up at the top of the very first page of a chapter, which looks cluttered next to the chapter's opening design (drop cap, ornament, chapter number), most published books suppress the header specifically on chapter-opening pages.
Why it happens
Running headers are usually set once at the section/master level and apply to every page in that section by default, including the first page of a new chapter. Suppressing them just on chapter openers requires a "different first page" setting scoped to each chapter, which is easy to skip since it isn't as obvious as the main header/footer toggle.
How to fix it
You haven't picked a formatting program yet, so every program's steps are shown below, pick a tab for the one you're using.
- Double-click into the header/footer of a chapter's opening page, go to Header & Footer Tools > Design tab, and check "Different First Page", this suppresses the header on that page only while keeping it everywhere else in the section.
- If chapters are separated only by plain page breaks rather than section breaks, "Different First Page" applies per-section, so you may need a Next Page section break at each chapter start for this to work per-chapter rather than just once at the very start of the document.
- Docs supports "Different first page" but only once per document, not per chapter, unless you insert a section break (Insert > Break > Section break (next page)) before each chapter start and use the header/footer Options menu to set "different header/footer" per section.
- This is more manual in Docs than in a book-specific tool, if you have many chapters, consider whether this specific piece is worth finishing formatting in Word or Atticus instead.
- This is handled automatically. Atticus's Chapter Break styles are built to suppress the running header on the opening page of each chapter by default, so there's usually nothing to configure.
- If a header IS showing on a chapter opener, check that the chapter actually starts with a real Chapter Break block from the outline rather than a plain paragraph.
- On the page that opens a chapter, apply a Master Page variant with no header text frame (or an empty override on that one page) instead of the standard A/B-Master.
- Alternatively, select the header text frame on that specific page and override it from the master (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+click), then delete just that instance, this only affects the one page.
- Scrivener's Compile Format Designer doesn't offer reliable per-chapter header suppression, compile to Word and follow Word's fix above, or move to Atticus, where this is handled automatically.
- Pages supports "Different first page" (Format inspector > Section tab) per section, insert a section break at each chapter start and check that option for each one to suppress the header on chapter openers.
- This is more manual in Pages than in a book-specific tool, if you have many chapters, consider finishing this piece in Word or Atticus instead.
- This is handled automatically by Reedsy Studio's typesetting themes, running headers are suppressed on chapter-opening pages as part of the standard book design convention built into each theme.
- If a header is still showing on a chapter opener, check that the chapter was created as a real chapter entry in the outline, not typed as plain text inside another chapter.
- This is handled automatically by Vellum, running headers are suppressed on chapter-opening pages as part of its standard book design.
- If a header is still showing, check that the chapter was created as a real entry in Vellum's chapter list, not typed as plain text inside another chapter.
- Uncheck "Same content on first page" on the relevant Header/Footer tab (Format > Page Style) for the page style covering each chapter, this suppresses the header on that page only.
- If chapters share one page style, you may need a page-style change at each chapter start (via a styled page break) for "different first page" to apply per-chapter rather than just once at the very start of the document.