If you get this error, it means that you have put what’s called a fragile command in a thing called a moving argument. In English, that means you’ve put a cite command or a footnote command or similar in something like a section heading, like so:

section{This is a section about citeasnoun{reference1}}

This will give you the error:

! Argument of @sect has an extra }.

To fix this, all you have to do is protect the fragile command as follows:

section{This is a section about protectciteasnoun{reference1}}

See the UK list of LaTeX FAQ for more solutions.

categories: Nature and Science and Tech
tags: computing, latex, top tips
last modified: 20th Feb 2012