Text Formatting ⇒ Right aligning a left-aligned block of text

[Matt_Fl]

I want to have a left aligned block of left aligned text on one side of the page and a right aligned block of left aligned text on the other. I have tried using a tabular environment, but I can't get exactly what I want without resorting to manually inputting column spacings (not ideal). Any ideas?

Thanks in Advance!!
Matt

[frabjous]

I'd help but I don't really understand what it is you want to do. What is a "right aligned block of left aligned text"?

Is the entire document going to be like this, or just a small part? Does one part wrap around to the other? Do you know how large you want these blocks to be? Why can't you use a tabular environment and insert column spacings as a portion of \textwidth?

[localghost]

Similar to frabjous I think that it would help if you describe what you are aiming at. There might be several solutions which can depend on the purpose.


Best regards and welcome to the board
Thorsten

[Matt_Fl]

Sorry, I realize my explanation was a bit confusing. I want something to right align the block of text (which is left aligned within itself) to the right margin. And the same thing on the left margin (this is trivial to do). This is going to be used for only a small section of my document, but maybe a few times throughout. I played around with using an offset to \textwidth, but the only way I could figure out how to do it was to manually input the offset. Is there a way to automate that process?

[frabjous]

I still don't have a clear understanding of what you want to do. Is the left aligned box and right aligned box next to each other in the same vertical position? How large do you want these paragraph blocks to be?

Anyway, consider using, e.g., a \parbox with an \hfill to push it to the right:

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\noindent\parbox{0.4\textwidth}{\raggedright Here is the text that goes on the left and I'm just filling it out a little so that it will take up multiple lines.}\hfill%
\parbox{0.4\textwidth}{\raggedright Here is the text that goes on the right and I'm just filling it out a little so that it will take up multiple lines.}

\bigskip

Here is some normal paragraph text so you can see what the above looks like in comparison.

\end{document} 

[localghost]

I still have difficulties in getting involved with that because I can't figure out precisely how this is going to look like. So I can only suggest to take a look at the parallels or parcolumns package.

[Matt_Fl]

The parbox with hfill does what I want at the moment. I will check out the two packages if I want to do something more sophisticated in the future. Thank you!