\hspace not even

Question

I want to put 3 figures in one line and I adjust the horizontal position of figures using \hspace{}. The problem is that when I set the spacing to -16pt, i.e. \hspace{-16pt}, the figure does not move left. When I set the spacing to -17pt, \hspace{-17pt}, the figure moves to the left a lot. I tried spacing -15pt, -14pt, ..., -1pt, 0pt. The figure's position is the same as \hspace{-16pt}.

The example code is as follows:

\begin{figure*}
    \centering
    \captionsetup{labelfont=bf}
    \begin{multicols}{3}
        \hspace{-15pt}
        \includegraphics[width=63mm]{images/1.pdf}\par 
        \hspace{-15pt}
        \includegraphics[width=63mm]{images/2.pdf}\par 
        \hspace{-15pt}
        \includegraphics[width=63mm]{images/3.pdf}\par
    \end{multicols}

\end{figure*}

Why does this happen? How to make appropriate adjustment? I do need the figure to move to the left a little bit, but not that much.

There are almost certainly good reasons for your problem, but without any actual code to test, it is hard to guess what you are doing 'wrong'. Please post a complete, but minimal(!) example (or see here). — jon, Apr 01 '17 at 03:42
Note (for future reference): you are missing \documentclass, \begin{document}, and \end{document} (to make the example complete); and people don't have your 3 PDFs in your images/ directory, so the example can't be compiled (a good substitute is to load the package mwe and use, say, its example-image.png). — jon, Apr 01 '17 at 04:13
Related: What is the difference between \hspace*{\fill} and \hfill? — Werner, Apr 01 '17 at 04:30

score 9 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 01 '17 at 03:55

9

At the start of a line TeX ignores spaces. The star form is needed: \hspace*{-15pt}.

answered Apr 01 '17 at 03:55

Heiko Oberdiek

271,626

\hspace not even

1 Answers1