Removing extra vertical space before chapter heading

Question

I'm trying to remove some extraneous extra space that appears before chapter headings in the book class. I've used titlesec to set the space-above to 0pt, but there is still about one line's worth of space (that doesn't appear, e.g., if I use section instead of chapter).
This MWE shows the problem, with geometry frames drawn to indicate the positioning of the headers:
documentclass{book}
usepackage{geometry}
usepackage{titlesec}

geometry{showframe}

titleformat{chapter}[hang]%
  {sffamilyHuge}% format applied to label+text
  {thechapter}%% label
  {0.5em}% horizontal separation between label and title body
  {}% before the title body
  []% after the title body

titleformat{section}[hang]%
  {sffamilyHuge}% format applied to label+text
  {thesection}%% label
  {0.5em}% horizontal separation between label and title body
  {}% before the title body
  []% after the title body

titlespacing*{chapter}{0pt}{0pt}{0pt}
titlespacing*{section}{0pt}{0pt}{0pt}

begin{document}

chapter{A Chapter}

Notice the white space above the heading.

newpage

section{A Section}

But no white space in this case.

end{document}

Bernard · Accepted Answer

To have a code that doesn't depend on the fontsize, you may use a unit that depends on the font. It happens titlesec defines a shortcut for such a unit, to be used in titlespacing: *n means n ex, with a minute stretchability and shrinkability if required to ensure the bottoms of all pages for  testing). This being said, I wouldn't recommend  no vertical spacing below titles, for æsthetic reasons
documentclass{book}
usepackage[showframe]{geometry}
usepackage{titlesec}

geometry{showframe}

titleformat{chapter}[hang]%
  {sffamilyHuge}% format applied to label+text
  {thechapter}%% label
  {0.5em}% horizontal separation between label and title body
  {}% before the title body
  []% after the title body

titleformat{section}[hang]%
  {sffamilyHuge}% format applied to label+text
  {thesection}%% label
  {0.5em}% horizontal separation between label and title body
  {}% before the title body
  []% after the title body

titlespacing*{chapter}{0pt}{*-3.5}{*0}
titlespacing*{section}{0pt}{0pt}{0pt}

begin{document}

chapter{Ä v Chapter}

Notice no white space above the heading.

newpage

section{A Section}

But no white space in this case.

section{A First Section}

end{document}

hesham · Answer

In your code just reduce further the "before chapter title spacing" to -ve value (e.g. -20pt):
titlespacing*{chapter}{0pt}{-20pt}{0pt}

Removing extra vertical space before chapter heading

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