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I was wondering how can one place vertical spacing on both the left and right columns while using the [twocolumn] option. I used the \vspace{} command above the section of code where the columns begin, but it only puts vertical spacing on the left column. I need the right column to also be spaced down vertically at the same distance as the left column.

doncherry
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night owl
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  • that is only possible on top of a new page. Use package multicol instead, if possible. –  Jul 24 '11 at 08:05
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    I think you're referring to the the twocolumn option (to a documentclass), e.g. loaded like this: \documentclass[twocolumn]{article}. If I'm mistaken, please revert my edit. – doncherry Jul 24 '11 at 09:24
  • @Don: Yes, my mistake. Meant to say documentclass and not a package as you stated above. Thanks for the edit. – night owl Jul 24 '11 at 11:28

1 Answers1

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I'm not sure if this is what you need, but you could increase the top margin using the geometry package:

\documentclass[twocolumn]{article}

\usepackage[pass,showframe]{geometry}

\newgeometry{top=10cm}

\usepackage{lipsum}

\begin{document}
\lipsum[1-4]
\end{document}

two column doc with increased top margin

Notes:

  1. options to geometry: pass tells geometry not to change anything, but just load the package. showframe makes geometry display lines at the margins.
  2. lipsum is just for blind text (four paragraphs of blind text).
  3. This will, as visualized by the lines, also push the header down. Let me know if that's unwanted.
doncherry
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  • @ Don: Thanks for the answer. I have to get off now, but I will check with my TeX code tomorrow and see if this does the trick. – night owl Jul 24 '11 at 11:31
  • @nightowl: Sure, let me now if you need more help. – doncherry Jul 27 '11 at 12:16
  • This was good, and what I mean by good is in the sense that this is how I would like it to look so far as the twocolumn goes, but I did not want this lipsum thing added. Imagine having 50 vocabulary words and you wanted to put 25 words on each column for the page. This is what I was looking for. The left column words 1-25 and the right column 26-50. Is that clear to picture? Let me know if you need more description. – night owl Aug 10 '11 at 10:07
  • The lipsum is just blind text, simply remove it. If you want the columns balanced, take a look at TH.'s answer. If, however, you want to make a vocab list with one language on the left hand side and the other on the right hand side, I strongly recommend using a table instead of the twocolumn option. On tables in general, see e.g. The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX2e. If you want to modify the table further, check out http://tex.stackexchange.com/q/12672. – doncherry Aug 10 '11 at 11:15