How to get horizontal parts of an exercise?

Question

My question is how may I specify that the parts to a question be typeset horizontally with the option to specify the amount of rows as well as shown below. It is also essential that the level of enumeration inside the exercises start with lowercase letters (not numbers).

Answer 1

Here is a solution using the tasks package by your fellow user clemens.

To get three 3 columns, say

\begin{tasks}(3) 
\task ... 
\task etc. 
\end{tasks}

The task labels can be changed with counter-format={(tsk[a])}, where 'tsk' will be replaced with the actual task counter. [a] will use \alph, i.e. lower case characters. (See the tasks manual for more options)

\documentclass{article}


\usepackage{mathtools}

\usepackage{tasks}

\begin{document}

\begin{enumerate}
\item Evaluate each expression without calculator
\settasks{counter-format={(tsk[a])},label-offset=1em}
\begin{tasks}(3)
  \task $(-3)^4$ 
  \task $-3^4$
  \task $3^{-4}$
  \task $\dfrac{5^{23}}{5^{21}}$
  \task $\left(\dfrac{2}{3}\right)^{-2}$
  \task $16^{-3/4}$
\end{tasks}
\end{enumerate}

\end{document}