How do you adjust the margins for text in a minipage?

Question

\documentclass[letterpaper,10pt]{article}
\usepackage{amsfonts}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage[none]{hyphenat}
\usepackage[margin=1in]{geometry}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{layouts}

\begin{document}
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.5\textwidth}
text
\end{minipage}\begin{minipage}[t]{0.5\textwidth}
text
\end{minipage}
\end{document}

I have a page with two columns of text. When the text is full, the two columns look too close together in the middle, how do I increase that spacing between one column and the other?

You can make their widths a bit smaller and add a \hfill. `\documentclass[letterpaper,10pt]{article} \usepackage[none]{hyphenat} \usepackage[margin=1in]{geometry} \usepackage{fancyhdr} \usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document} \begin{minipage}[t]{0.45\textwidth} \lipsum[1] \end{minipage}\hfill\begin{minipage}[t]{0.45\textwidth} \lipsum[2] \end{minipage} \end{document}. Whether this is better than atwocolumn` document with some column break I don't know. — , Sep 13 '19 at 03:34
I'm voting to close this question because it is solved in the comments. — Stefan Pinnow, Sep 13 '19 at 03:54
@Schrödinger'scat: Unless it is a duplicate, probably better to have the comment as an answer. — Peter Grill, Sep 13 '19 at 04:23
Or someone could just post an answer and I could put a green check mark next to it. — TeXnichal, Sep 13 '19 at 04:34
@StefanPinnow What is the advantage of closing questions immeadetly after asking? Please stop that bad behaviour at once! — Mensch, Sep 13 '19 at 13:01
@Mensch, what is the problem closing a question that is solved? I have a pretty good idea who Schrödinger's cat is and my guess is that he has nothing against the close (which might cost him 25 points ...). — Stefan Pinnow, Sep 13 '19 at 13:57
I personally would like to argue that it is best to ask the OP what to do with the question. (Just got up now.) However, the most important point is that the OP has an answer that works for them. In any case, maybe `\documentclass{article} \usepackage{lipsum,multicol} \begin{document}
\begin{multicols}{2} \lipsum[1] \vfill\null \columnbreak \lipsum[2] \end{multicols} \end{document}(see e.g. https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/8687 for\vfill\null`) is IMHO an arguably cleaner solution. — , Sep 13 '19 at 15:58
@StefanPinnow: I wasn't suggesting posting an answer for the sake of rep gathering by the cat that may or may not be who one thinks it is :-). If someone else in the future has a similar question, they should easily be able to see that there is an answer, not just some comments. I don't see how this question "does not fall within the scope of TeX". — Peter Grill, Sep 13 '19 at 16:47
@PeterGrill, I never said that the question does not fall within the scope of TeX ... Unfortunately there only is the "off-topic" option to state a free comment for the close. So that is the one I use. If you (and Mensch) don't like this, maybe it is worth to state that in a meta question? — Stefan Pinnow, Sep 13 '19 at 17:19
@StefanPinnow I agree with Peter Grill. As you correctly suspect, I do not care about the reputation points at all. However, I feel that we should give users, in particular new users, the opportunity to indicate what they think should happen to their questions. Of course, I also see and acknowledge your point, which is that if a question is answered it is technically no longer an open question, but would like to argue that closing it like this may send a possibly unfortunate signal to new users. — , Sep 13 '19 at 23:58
I would say SC gave me a correct answer, so I should indicate as such with a green check next to the answer. Other people might have this question and search for it. — TeXnichal, Sep 14 '19 at 00:26
There are some reason to mess with minipages when this can be achieved easily by other ways? Do you know that \documentclass[twocolumn]{article} is enough to have two column docuements with the right margins, or that you can use the multicol package to make two columns (or more) only in some part of one column document? — Fran, Sep 14 '19 at 04:21
@Schrödinger'scat, then go for it. The question is open again. — Stefan Pinnow, Sep 14 '19 at 12:52

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 14 '19 at 15:35

Among the many possibilities that exist here, one is to make the minipages less wide and put a \hfill in between.

\documentclass[letterpaper,10pt]{article} 
\usepackage[none]{hyphenat} 
\usepackage[margin=1in]{geometry} 
\usepackage{fancyhdr} 
\usepackage{lipsum} 
\begin{document} 
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.45\textwidth} 
\lipsum[1] 
\end{minipage}\hfill\begin{minipage}[t]{0.45\textwidth} 
\lipsum[2] 
\end{minipage} 
\end{document}

Another one is to use multicol.

\documentclass[letterpaper,10pt]{article} 
\usepackage[none]{hyphenat} 
\usepackage[margin=1in]{geometry} 
\usepackage{fancyhdr} 
\usepackage{lipsum} 
\usepackage{multicol} 
\begin{document} 
\begin{multicols}{2} 
\lipsum[1] 
\vfill\null% https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/8687
\columnbreak 
\lipsum[2] 
\end{multicols} 
\end{document}

How do you adjust the margins for text in a minipage?

1 Answers1