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I am trying to have two columns in the columns of a twocolumn mode (See the MWE. Please excuse that it is so long, it was the only way to illustrate what I mean). If the list extends the column it is continued on the next page, not on the right page side. How can I fix this? Many thanks!

\documentclass[fleqn,10pt,twocolumn]{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{multicol}
\begin{document}
\section{Test}
\lipsum[1-2]
\begin{multicols}{2}
Abkhaz\\
Adyghe\\
Afrikaans\\
Agul\\
Albanian\\
Altaic\\
ArmenianEastern\\
ArmenianGrabar\\
ArmenianWestern\\
Awar\\
Aymara\\
AzeriCyrillic\\
AzeriLatin\\
Bashkir\\
Basque\\
Belarusian\\
Bemba\\
Blackfoot\\
Breton\\
Bugotu\\
Bulgarian\\
Buryat\\
Catalan\\
Chamorro\\
Chechen\\
ChineseSimplified\\
ChineseTraditional\\
Chukcha\\
Chuvash\\
Corsican\\
CrimeanTatar\\
Croatian\\
Crow\\
Czech\\
Danish\\
Dargwa\\
Dungan\\
Dutch\\
DutchBelgian\\
Khanty\\
Kikuyu\\
Kirgiz\\
Kongo\\
Korean\\
Koryak\\
Kpelle\\
Kumyk\\
Kurdish\\
Lak\\
Lappish\\
Latin\\
Latvian\\
Lezgin\\
Lithuanian\\
Luba\\
Macedonian\\
Malagasy\\
\end{multicols}

\end{document}
ShreevatsaR
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Kathiieee
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    Can you not use [twocolumn] and just use \begin{multicols}{2}... most of the time and \begin{multicols}{4}... where you want 4 columns? – David Carlisle Oct 14 '13 at 11:38
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    If there is any way to still use twocolumn I would prefer that because the whole book is based on that. If it is not possible I guess I could switch back to onecolumn and then use your approach – Kathiieee Oct 14 '13 at 11:55
  • Sorry, but multicol doesn't fully support twocolumn mode (there's warning about that). I think the best way is to go with the solution of @DavidCarlisle. – masu Oct 14 '13 at 11:56
  • If your 4-column data is always an exampleset like this, you may want to consider using a breakable tabular environment (like longtable, xtab, supertabular or ltablex). It is not as convenient, but may save you the trouble of switching between 2 and 4 column modes. – masu Oct 14 '13 at 11:58
  • Well if I use a breakable tabular environment i guess i need to put in the separators manually? This would be kind of annoying since the tabular should go down, not from left to right – Kathiieee Oct 14 '13 at 12:07
  • @Kathiieee Yes, that is the case in this alternative. (If you want someone to be notified of your comment use the @ command as I did here - the owner of the question will always receive notifications). – masu Oct 14 '13 at 12:37
  • @masu Alright, thank you :) Well in that case I will leave it in the original two column mode (where it needs much space) than putting separators manually in a list of about 300 Languages. – Kathiieee Oct 14 '13 at 14:56
  • @Kathiieee this problem raised a question for me. What about generating a warning if the columnbreak is "mispositioned"? Would that help? I've just submitted it to the site here. – masu Oct 14 '13 at 20:26

1 Answers1

8

MWE

As a MWE is better than a thousand words, here you can how to switch from one to two columns without multicol package (without any trick that mean a new page) as well as having multicols inside a column (that must fit well within the parent column, or you will obtain amusing results ...). 

\documentclass[10pt]{article}
\usepackage{microtype}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{multicol}
\begin{document}

\twocolumn[
\section{One column}
{\lipsum*[2]}
\bigskip]

\section{Two columns}

A little text that show the width of one normal column.

\section{Mini columns}
\begin{multicols}{2}
\lipsum[2]
\end{multicols}

\section{Again two columns}
\lipsum[5]

\section{Again mini columns}
\begin{multicols}{2}
\lipsum[2]
\end{multicols}

\onecolumn

\lipsum[1-3]

\twocolumn[\section{Return to the two columns}
{\lipsum*[2]}
\bigskip]

\lipsum[1-3]

\end{document}
Fran
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