How do I break authors into groups with authblk?

Question

I have a paper that has a large number of authors, some of whom are primary and some of whom are secondary. I am using the authblk package to handle the many affiliations like so:

\author[1]{Fred Foo}
\author[2]{Barbara Bar}
% Here I would like a line break
\author[1]{Sylvia Sub-Author}
...

According to the authblk package documentation

if the author text is to be forced to a new line, use \authorcr ...

But it seems like that can only be used within an \author command's argument, not between author commands. If I try to put \authorcr between the two authors in the example above, I get

A \newline or \\ command appears between paragraphs, where it makes no
sense. If you're trying to ``leave a blank line'', use a \vspace
command.

I can't actually use \vspace because the vertical space would appear in the document when the \author commands are being read, instead of when the \maketitle is executed.

I've tried putting a null author in, but that gives me an extra "," floating around.

Any suggestions? This seems like something that users writing papers with lots of authors would often want to do.

Here is a minimal working example:

\documentclass[letterpaper]{article} %DO NOT CHANGE THIS
\usepackage{authblk}            % large number of authors
\begin{document}
\title{Paper Concerning Something Very Interesting}
\author[1]{A.N. Author}
\author[4]{A.N. Other}
\author[2]{Y.A.N. Other}
\author[1]{A.N. Author, Jr.}
\author[2]{A.N. Author, III}
\author[1]{One Subordinate Author}
\author[3]{Two Subordinate Author}
\author[4]{Third Subordinate Author}
\author[5]{Fourth Subordinate Author}
\affil[1]{A Company}
\affil[2]{Another Company}
\affil[3]{YA Company}
\affil[4]{A University}
\affil[5]{Another University}
\maketitle
\thispagestyle{empty}
\begin{abstract}
Yes, it's very abstract...
\end{abstract}
\begin{center}
  \Large \textit{Draft: Do not circulate}
\end{center}
\section{Introduction}
lorem ipsum
\end{document}
%%% Local Variables:
%%% mode: latex
%%% TeX-master: t
%%% End:

Gives this:

I would like to be able to put a break between "A.N. Author, III" and "One Subordinate Author."

Can you mock up a complete, minimal example? It should start with \documentclass and end with \end{document} and allow us to copy-and-paste-and-compile and see exactly what you're currently seeing. Can you do that? — Werner, Nov 11 '21 at 00:49
Thanks! As reference, consider viewing I've just been asked to write a minimal working example (MWE), what is that? For example, since your problem resides with titles, there's no need for including gensymb, amsmath, amssymb, xcolor, ... since with their removal your working example should still function. Nor do you need all the margin and page settings, since they do not pertain to the problem. In short, remove all the content that doesn't pertain to the problem yet still allows to replicate the issue. — Werner, Nov 11 '21 at 18:56

real-or-random · Answer 1 · 2022-05-03T13:29:49.363

A dirty but working hack is to add \authorcr inside the first \author after the desired line break:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{authblk}
\title{Paper Concerning Something Very Interesting}
\author[1]{A.N.~Author}
\author[4]{A.N.~Other}
% The \authorcr within the following \author forces a line break here
\author[2]{\authorcr Y.A.N.~Other}
\author[1]{A.N.~Author,~Jr.}
\author[2]{A.N.~Author,~III}
\author[1]{One~Subordinate~Author}
\author[3]{Two~Subordinate~Author}
\author[4]{Third~Subordinate~Author}
\author[5]{Fourth~Subordinate~Author}
\affil[1]{A~Company}
\affil[2]{Another~Company}
\affil[3]{YA~Company}
\affil[4]{A~University}
\affil[5]{Another~University}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\end{document}

Note that it's also a good idea to use non-breaking spaces ~ in the author names to avoid line breaks after the first name and the ensure proper spacing after a ..

How do I break authors into groups with authblk?

1 Answers1