Align text under a colon

Question

In plain text, this is what I want to do:

Explanation: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Phasellus volutpat eu orci vitae eleifend.
             Praesent sed orci commodo, venenatis neque vel, pulvinar velit.
             Mauris ullamcorper tellus sed quam pellentesque, vitae sagittis nisl dapibus.

update

If hspace{5cm} fit the length of the word "Explanation: " and if hspace worked in the enumerate environment, the following would be what I want my document to look like:

\documentclass[11pt]{article}

\begin{document}

\begin{enumerate}

\item 1

answer

\item 2

explanation: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Phasellus volutpat eu orci vitae eleifend.\\ \hspace {5cm}Praesent sed orci commodo, venenatis neque vel, pulvinar velit.\\ \hspace {5cm}Mauris ullamcorper tellus sed quam pellentesque, vitae sagittis nisl dapibus.

\item 3

answer

\end{enumerate}

\end{document}

Basically, imagine

Explanation: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Phasellus volutpat eu orci vitae eleifend.
             Praesent sed orci commodo, venenatis neque vel, pulvinar velit.
             Mauris ullamcorper tellus sed quam pellentesque, vitae sagittis nisl dapibus.

is in an enumerate environment.

This is what I want:

Plain text or Plain TeX? Are you interested in page breaking capability for the right-hand text? Have you seen the enumitem package for list management? Do you know of tabular environments like tabularx? — Werner, Sep 04 '13 at 17:35
EDIT: Yes, what @TorbjørnT. said. Much better. Don't abuse tables. — , Sep 04 '13 at 17:38
Something like http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/33817/description-like-environment-with-fixed-labels-width/33818#33818? — Torbjørn T., Sep 04 '13 at 17:38
removed the align tag, as that is specifically for math. horizontal-alignment might work, but it's really the indentation (\hangindent would be appropriate if this were plain tex) that's involved here. — barbara beeton, Sep 04 '13 at 17:48
I was saying "plain text" to refer to my presentation of the formatting on this question. But I mean I want to use that in a LaTeX article. — Frank Epps, Sep 04 '13 at 17:50
From comment trail below, still not clear what you want it to look like. If you want numbers before the hanging part but without a straightforward numbering scheme you could define your own counter in conjunction with the below. Show a picture of your ideal output. — Aubrey Blumsohn, Sep 05 '13 at 17:28

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 12 '17 at 18:31

Revised answer based on revised question. There are many ways to skin a cat. Here are two possible ways that might provide some inspiration.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{hanging}
\usepackage{longtable}
\newlength{\hangwidth}
\newcommand{\newhang}[1]{\settowidth{\hangwidth}{#1}\par\hangpara{\hangwidth}{1}#1}
\newcounter{myquestion}

\begin{document}
\stepcounter{myquestion} 
\newhang{\arabic{myquestion}. Question: }What is the question?
\newhang{Answer: }Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.\\Phasellus volutpat eu orci vitae eleifend.\\Praesent sed orci commodo, venenatis neque vel, pulvinar velit.\\Mauris ullamcorper tellus sed quam pellentesque, vitae sagittis nisl dapibus.
\stepcounter{myquestion} 
\newhang{\arabic{myquestion}. Question: }What is the question?
\newhang{Answer: }Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.\\Phasellus volutpat eu orci vitae eleifend.\\Praesent sed orci commodo, venenatis neque vel, pulvinar velit.\\Mauris ullamcorper tellus sed quam pellentesque, vitae sagittis nisl dapibus.
\stepcounter{myquestion} 
\newhang{\arabic{myquestion}. Question: }What is the question?
\newhang{Answer: }Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.\\Phasellus volutpat eu orci vitae eleifend.\\Praesent sed orci commodo, venenatis neque vel, pulvinar velit.\\Mauris ullamcorper tellus sed quam pellentesque, vitae sagittis nisl dapibus.

\setcounter{myquestion}{0}
\begin{longtable}{rp{0.7\textwidth}}
\stepcounter{myquestion}\arabic{myquestion}. Question: &What is the question?\\
Answer: &Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Phasellus volutpat eu orci vitae eleifend. Praesent sed orci commodo, venenatis neque vel, pulvinar velit. Mauris ullamcorper tellus sed quam pellentesque, vitae sagittis nisl dapibus.\\
\stepcounter{myquestion}\arabic{myquestion}. Question: &What is the question?\\
Answer: &Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Phasellus volutpat eu orci vitae eleifend. Praesent sed orci commodo, venenatis neque vel, pulvinar velit. Mauris ullamcorper tellus sed quam pellentesque, vitae sagittis nisl dapibus.\\
\stepcounter{myquestion}\arabic{myquestion}. Question: &What is the question?\\
Answer: &Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Phasellus volutpat eu orci vitae eleifend. Praesent sed orci commodo, venenatis neque vel, pulvinar velit. Mauris ullamcorper tellus sed quam pellentesque, vitae sagittis nisl dapibus.\\
\stepcounter{myquestion}\arabic{myquestion}. Question: &What is the question?\\
\end{longtable}

\end{document}

enter image description here

Thanks. This works by itself, but within the enumerate environment, it doesn't work. Is there a way to fix that? — Frank Epps, Sep 04 '13 at 23:13
You said you wanted it in plain text. How do you want it to look in the enumerate environment? — Aubrey Blumsohn, Sep 05 '13 at 00:04
I was saying "plain text" to refer to my presentation of the formatting on this question. But I mean I want to use that in a LaTeX article. — Frank Epps, Sep 05 '13 at 00:46
Yes, I understand that. But the output I produced is identical to your required output. Why would you want to put this in an enumerate environment? Do you want a number in front of it? — Aubrey Blumsohn, Sep 05 '13 at 07:33
You need to show an example of exactly how you want it to look, if different from your question. — Aubrey Blumsohn, Sep 05 '13 at 09:34

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 29 '21 at 13:28

A quick hacky way to achieve this is with phantom which produces space equivalent to how much its argument would have it wasn't phantom'd.

\begin{enumerate}
  \item Question\\
  explanation: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Phasellus.\\
  \phantom{explanation:} Praesent sed orci commodo.\\
  \phantom{explanation:} Mauris ullamcorper tellus sed quam pellentesque, vitae sagittis.
\end{enumerate}

gives me (in Beamer):

Align text under a colon

update

2 Answers2

Linked