How do I bulletpoint some equations within an Align environment?

Question

I have a sequence of aligned equations, and I wish to bulletpoint some (but not all) of them. For example, in this MWE I wish to bulletpoint just the first and third lines (beginning with ABCDE = ..., and with F = ...).

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsfonts}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\begin{document}

This is some text in which I discuss the equations that follow. Lorem ipsum dolor
sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore
et dolore magna aliqua.
\begin{align}
ABCDE &= xy + xz \nonumber \\
&= x(y+z), \\
F &= pq + pr \nonumber \\
&= p(q+r).
\end{align}
This is more text in which I discuss the above equations. Ut enim ad minim veniam,
quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu
fugiat nulla pariatur.

\end{document}

I have tried to use the Itemize environment and an \intertext command to insert the \item, as suggested at Sharing alignment between equations in two different items, but this produces ugly formatting, probably because I don't have a 'title' for each item - the first bulletpoint sits on the line above the first line of the equations, a gap is introduced between the second and third lines, and there is no second bulletpoint:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsfonts}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\begin{document}

This is some text in which I discuss the equations that follow. Lorem ipsum dolor
sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore
et dolore magna aliqua.
\begin{itemize}
\item \begin{align} ABCDE &= xy + xz \nonumber \\
&= x(y+z), \\
\intertext{\item } F &= pq + pr \nonumber \\
&= p(q+r).
\end{align}
\end{itemize}
This is more text in which I discuss the above equations. Ut enim ad minim veniam,
quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu
fugiat nulla pariatur.

\end{document}

At the moment I am attempting to work around this by simply inserting \bullet wherever I want a bulletpoint and fiddling with the whitespace by hand (e.g. using \quad and the like) until the bulletpoints are aligned with each other and a suitable distance from their equation, but this is hardly satisfactory.

Thanks for the help, I hope this question makes sense!

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 11 '17 at 09:42

Alignment via boxes is pretty straight forward:

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}
%\usepackage{amsfonts}
%\usepackage{amssymb}
%\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{amsmath}% http://ctan.org/pkg/amsmath
\newlength{\mylen}
\begin{document}

This is some text in which I discuss the equations that follow. Lorem ipsum dolor
sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore
et dolore magna aliqua.
\settowidth{\mylen}{$ABCDE$}
\begin{align}
\llap{\textbullet\hspace{100pt}} ABCDE &= xy + xz \nonumber \\
&= x(y+z), \\
\llap{\textbullet\hspace{100pt}} \makebox[\mylen][r]{$F$} &= pq + pr \nonumber \\
&= p(q+r).
\end{align}
This is more text in which I discuss the above equations. Ut enim ad minim veniam,
quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu
fugiat nulla pariatur.

\end{document}

The idea is to make the left-hand side of each equation to be bullet-ed the same in terms of its width. That width is the widest element ( $ABCDE$ in your example). And, pushing the bullet to the left using a left overlap (via \llap) with some additional spacing to suit your needs (I chose 100pt).

The advantage from working with this approach is that the horizontal alignment is kept with/without the bullets:

enter image description here

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 21 '17 at 22:47

The following MWE (minimum working example) uses the align environment and the \textbullet command to place a "bullet" in the first and third row of the system of four equations.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\begin{document}
\begin{align} 
\text{\textbullet} && ABCDE &= xy + xz \nonumber \\
&& &= x(y+z), \\
\text{\textbullet} && F &= pq + pr \nonumber \\
&& &= p(q+r).
\end{align}
\end{document}

enter image description here

It is, of course, possible to fiddle with the alignment of the "bullets" by inserting more pairs of && column dividers.

How do I bulletpoint some equations within an Align environment?

2 Answers2