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I'm trying to arrange a poem with one word followed by a block of text followed by one word aligned with the bottom. I keep getting stuck

\documentclass[11pt]{article}

\usepackage{tabularx}
\usepackage{array}
\usepackage{lipsum}


\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}[b]{r p{.8\textwidth} b{.1\textwidth}}

Top & \lipsum[1] & Bottom\\

Top & \lipsum[2] & Bottom\\

\end{tabular}

\end{document}

enter image description here

Obviously I want the word "Bottom" aligned to the bottom.

I've looked here, here, and several other posts, but those solutions haven't been working for me- perhaps because my middle column is very large.

Community
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wolf_math
  • 357
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    for this arrangement, i wouldn't use tabular, but tabbing, and shift the "bottom" element off to the right with an \rlap. i've just concocted something like that recently, but it's on another computer that i won't have access to until tomorrow. (the application was a riff on a glossary, and the third element was a reference page number.) – barbara beeton Apr 12 '16 at 02:18
  • Related: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/113022/vertical-alignment-in-tabular-cells-with-variable-height –  Apr 12 '16 at 09:10
  • The related link was mentioned in the original post. In order to use this you need to know exactly how many lines are in the cell. This is not ideal, though I suppose possible through guess and check. – wolf_math Apr 12 '16 at 21:28

1 Answers1

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You can attach the final word to the last line of the paragraph:

enter image description here

\documentclass[11pt]{article}

\usepackage{tabularx}
\usepackage{array}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\newcommand\lastbit[1]{\ifhmode\unskip\fi\nobreak\hfill\rlap{\hspace{2\tabcolsep}#1}}

\begin{document}

\noindent
\begin{tabular}[b]{r p{.8\textwidth}}

Top & \lipsum*[1]\lastbit{Bottom}\\

Top & \lipsum*[2]\lastbit{Bottom}\\

\end{tabular}

\end{document}
David Carlisle
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