How to comment part of a line?

Question

I am writing a text which I will review later again and want to comment out only a part of a line (in between), something like this:

Once upon a time, there was %in some galaxy far away%
a nice and cute rabbit...

When I review it again, I could decide if it is better to include that part or not.

Is it possible to do such a thing?

score 50 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 14 '16 at 15:49

50

You could use a so-called “meta-comment”, something like this:

This is typeset. \iffalse This is not. \fi This is typeset again.

Note the position of the spaces.

answered Jul 14 '16 at 15:49

GuM

1

This idea is really handy. It has the plus that it makes it easy to search for \textit{things that I left unfinished somewhere} later on. I can get used to it :) – Luis Jul 15 '16 at 16:29

Moriambar · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-14T15:48:18.867

36

LaTeX/TeX do not support mid-line comments. the % character will start a comment which will end at the start of the new line.

What you can do is split your lines, like so

Start your
% text this
way

edited Jul 14 '16 at 15:48

answered Jul 14 '16 at 15:41

Moriambar

5

Since LaTeX/TeX allows you to have almost as many linebreaks in your source code as you want, I tend to write very short lines (at least one per sentence). It allows for easy part-comments (like in this answer) and is beneficial to source control (when diff-ing). – fheub Jul 14 '16 at 16:41
2

«LaTeX/TeX do not support mid-line comments» is the clear, short answer that I was looking for :) – Luis Jul 14 '16 at 19:52

2 Answers2