## LaTeX forum ⇒ General ⇒ Equation left alignment using align

LaTeX specific issues not fitting into one of the other forums of this category.
fenghedo
Posts: 19
Joined: Sat Oct 04, 2008 3:01 pm

### Equation left alignment using align

Hi all,
I know one could use align in the following manner to align equations
1. \begin{align*}
2. A&=B\\
3. &=C
4. \end{align*}

But I have a long equation and I want to save some space by doing the following
1. \begin{align*}
2. &A\\
3. &=B\\
4. &=C
5. \end{align*}

But the whole equation just got pushed way right and left a big blank space on the left.

Is there any way I could tell LaTeX to align the whole thing left?

Thanks.

localghost
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Posts: 9206
Joined: Fri Feb 02, 2007 12:06 pm
Location: Braunschweig, Germany
I'm not sure whether I understand you right. You could set the fleqn (force left equation) option for the document class.

Best regards and welcome to the board
Thorsten¹
LaTeX Community Moderator

¹ System: openSUSE 42.2 (Linux 4.4.52), TeX Live 2016 (vanilla), TeXworks 0.6.1

fenghedo
Posts: 19
Joined: Sat Oct 04, 2008 3:01 pm
Thanks localghost. I did that and now it aligns to the left. However, LaTeX still leaves a margin of about 4 spaces to the left of the whole equation (I guess this is supposed to make it look nicer in the surrounding text environment). Please see the attached image.

Is there any way I could remove this shift?

Thanks.
Attachments
left_alignment.JPG (13.85 KiB) Viewed 16848 times

localghost
Site Moderator
Posts: 9206
Joined: Fri Feb 02, 2007 12:06 pm
Location: Braunschweig, Germany
Giving help would be easier if you provided the code of this excerpt shown in the screenshot.
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¹ System: openSUSE 42.2 (Linux 4.4.52), TeX Live 2016 (vanilla), TeXworks 0.6.1

fenghedo
Posts: 19
Joined: Sat Oct 04, 2008 3:01 pm
localghost wrote:Giving help would be easier if you provided the code of this excerpt shown in the screenshot.

1. Then equation something can be written as
2. \begin{align}
3. &E_{ic} = \frac{1}{N}\sum\limits_{z_k\in V} \left[
4. \norm{m_f(z_k;\mu_f) + m_b(z_k+m_f(z_k;\mu_f);\mu_b)}^2 \right.\notag\\
5. &\quad \left. +\norm{m_b(z_k;\mu_b) + m_f(z_k+m_b(z_k;\mu_b); \mu_f)}^2
6. \right] \notag\\
7. & = \frac{1}{N}\sum\limits_{z_k\in V} \left[
8. \norm{\begin{bmatrix}
9. m_{fx}(z_k;\mu_{fx}) + m_{bx}(z_k+m_f(z_k;\mu_{f});\mu_{bx})\\
10. m_{fy}(z_k;\mu_{fy}) + m_{by}(z_k+m_f(z_k;\mu_{f});\mu_{by})
11. \end{bmatrix}}^2 \right.\notag\\
13. m_{bx}(z_k;\mu_{bx}) + m_{fx}(z_k+m_b(z_k;\mu_{b}); \mu_{fx})\\
14. m_{by}(z_k;\mu_{by}) + m_{fy}(z_k+m_b(z_k;\mu_{b}); \mu_{fy})
15. \end{bmatrix}}^2
16. \right] \notag\\
17. \end{align}

I've seen people put full width equations in double column layouts. Do you know how to do that?

Thanks. I really appreciate the help.

Stefan Kottwitz
Posts: 8253
Joined: Mon Mar 10, 2008 9:44 pm
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Contact:
Hi fenghedo,

fenghedo wrote:However, LaTeX still leaves a margin of about 4 spaces to the left of the whole equation. Is there any way I could remove this shift?

Just set \mathindent to 0pt:
1. \setlength{\mathindent}{0pt}

Btw. in the first line of the formula above you probably want to write
1. E_{ic} &= \frac{1}{N} ...

look at the position of the &.

Stefan

localghost
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Posts: 9206
Joined: Fri Feb 02, 2007 12:06 pm
Location: Braunschweig, Germany
Another way of aligning could be the following.
1. \begin{align*}
2. E_{ic}=
3. \begin{split}
4. & \frac{1}{N}\sum\limits_{z_k\in V} \left[\norm{m_f(z_k;\mu_f) + m_b(z_k+m_f(z_k;\mu_f);\mu_b)}^2 \right. \\
5. & \left. +\norm{m_b(z_k;\mu_b) + m_f(z_k+m_b(z_k;\mu_b); \mu_f)}^2 \right]
6. \end{split}\\
7. =
8. \begin{split}
9. & \frac{1}{N}\sum\limits_{z_k\in V} \left[
10. \norm{\begin{bmatrix}
11. m_{fx}(z_k;\mu_{fx}) + m_{bx}(z_k+m_f(z_k;\mu_{f});\mu_{bx})\\
12. m_{fy}(z_k;\mu_{fy}) + m_{by}(z_k+m_f(z_k;\mu_{f});\mu_{by})
13. \end{bmatrix}}^2 \right. \\
14. & \left. +\norm{\begin{bmatrix}
15. m_{bx}(z_k;\mu_{bx}) + m_{fx}(z_k+m_b(z_k;\mu_{b}); \mu_{fx})\\
16. m_{by}(z_k;\mu_{by}) + m_{fy}(z_k+m_b(z_k;\mu_{b}); \mu_{fy})
17. \end{bmatrix}}^2 \right]
18. \end{split}
19. \end{align*}
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Juanjo
Posts: 656
Joined: Sat Jan 27, 2007 12:46 am
I assume that you have defined \norm more or less by \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\left\Vert#1\right\Vert}.

The solution proposed by localghost works if you replace \begin{split} by \begin{aligned}[t], and \end{split} by \end{aligned}. Anyway, I would remark the following facts:
• The equation number usually is vertically centered, which is not the case in your code. This can be simply achieved by replacing align by a combination of equation and split.
• You break lines which contain brackets in such a way that the opening bracket falls in one line and the closing one, in the second line. If you use \left - \right to fix the size of brackets, it may happen that the opening and closing brackets have different sizes, depending on the mathematical surrounding expressions. I find better to manually fix sizes.
• Since breaks happens inside a bracketed expression, the alignment point should on the left of the opening bracket.

Taking these points into account, I would propose the following code:
1. \begin{equation}
2. \begin{split}
3. E_{ic}&=\!
4. \begin{aligned}[t]
5. \frac{1}{N}\sum_{z_k\in V} \Bigl[&\norm{m_f(z_k;\mu_f)
6. + m_b(z_k+m_f(z_k;\mu_f);\mu_b)}^2 \Bigr. \\
7. \Bigl. & +\norm{m_b(z_k;\mu_b) + m_f(z_k+m_b(z_k;\mu_b); \mu_f)}^2 \Bigr]
8. \end{aligned}\\
9. &=\!
10. \begin{aligned}[t]
11. \frac{1}{N}\sum_{z_k\in V} \Biggl[
12. &\norm{\begin{bmatrix}
13. m_{fx}(z_k;\mu_{fx}) + m_{bx}(z_k+m_f(z_k;\mu_{f});\mu_{bx})\\
14. m_{fy}(z_k;\mu_{fy}) + m_{by}(z_k+m_f(z_k;\mu_{f});\mu_{by})
15. \end{bmatrix}}^2 \Biggr. \\
16. \Biggl. & +\norm{\begin{bmatrix}
17. m_{bx}(z_k;\mu_{bx}) + m_{fx}(z_k+m_b(z_k;\mu_{b}); \mu_{fx})\\
18. m_{by}(z_k;\mu_{by}) + m_{fy}(z_k+m_b(z_k;\mu_{b}); \mu_{fy})
19. \end{bmatrix}}^2 \Biggr].
20. \end{aligned}
21. \end{split}
22. \end{equation}

I have also added a point at the end. Mathematical expressions should be punctuated with commas and points, as done with ordinary text.
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