LaTeX forum ⇒ Graphics, Figures & Tables ⇒ Captions not centered Topic is solved

[norox]

Dear TeX Community,

I am having difficulties getting my captions centered underneath my graphs. I understand captions should be centered automatically. The funny thing is, if the caption is short enough it gets centered. However for example the following one does not:

Code: [Select all] [Expand/Collapse] [Download] (untitled.tex) Open in Overleaf

\begin{figure}[]
\centering
\includegraphics[scale=0.45]{mm,m1,mb,iff}
\caption{Interesting rates during the crisis \\ \textit{Source: authors graph based on FRED data}}
\label{mmm1iff}
\end{figure}

Can anyone help me fix this?

Best,

norox

[localghost]

For an adequate problem description please prepare a self-contained and minimal example in order to avoid speculations and guesswork.

Nevertheless, if I supplement your code snippet to a complete document, I can reproduce the problem. It seems to be better if you use the caption package and typeset the source of your figure as a second caption which is unnumbered.

Code: [Select all] [Expand/Collapse] [Download] (untitled.tex) Open in Overleaf

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[demo]{graphicx} % delete `demo` option in actual document
\usepackage{caption}
 
\begin{document}
   \begin{figure}[!ht]
     \centering
     \includegraphics[scale=0.45]{mmm1mbiff}
     \caption{Interesting rates during the crisis}
     \captionsetup{aboveskip=0pt,font=it}
     \caption*{Source: authors graph based on FRED data}
     \label{fig:mmm1mbiff}
   \end{figure}
\end{document}

Use this method wherever you have to add a source to a figure.


Best regards and welcome to the board
Thorsten

[norox]

thx problem solved!

[cgnieder]

Captions are only centered if they are shorter than one line:

Code: [Select all] [Expand/Collapse] [Download] (untitled.tex) Open in Overleaf

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[demo]{graphicx} % delete `demo` option in actual document
 
\begin{document}
   \begin{figure}[!ht]
     \centering
     \includegraphics[scale=0.45]{mmm1mbiff}
     \caption{short}
     \label{fig:short}
   \end{figure}
   \begin{figure}[!ht]
     \centering
     \includegraphics[scale=0.45]{mmm1mbiff}
     \caption{this one is so long that it does not fit into a single line any more so it spans two lines}
     \label{fig:long}
   \end{figure}
\end{document}

What's more: line breaks are not natively supported:

Code: [Select all] [Expand/Collapse] [Download] (untitled.tex) Open in Overleaf

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[demo]{graphicx} % delete `demo` option in actual document
 
\begin{document}
   \begin{figure}[!ht]
     \centering
     \includegraphics[scale=0.45]{mmm1mbiff}
     \caption{I want this to\\ be two lines}
     \label{fig:error}
   \end{figure}
   \begin{figure}[!ht]
     \centering
     \includegraphics[scale=0.45]{mmm1mbiff}
     \caption{I want this to\newline be two lines}
     \label{fig:vanish}
   \end{figure}
\end{document}

However, the caption package supports line breaks in captions. If the complete caption is short enough (and the option singlelinecheck=on is active which is the default) they even are centered without any further setup as long as you use \\ and not \newline:

Code: [Select all] [Expand/Collapse] [Download] (untitled.tex) Open in Overleaf

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[demo]{graphicx} % delete `demo` option in actual document
\usepackage{caption}
 
\begin{document}
   \begin{figure}[!ht]
     \centering
     \includegraphics[scale=0.45]{mmm1mbiff}
     \caption{I want this to\\ be two lines}
     \label{fig:works}
   \end{figure}
\end{document}

In your original code this does not work, because the caption is too long and the lines are left-aligned. However, caption has a solution for this, too: \captionsetup{justification=centering}. You can use this for all captions by placing it in the preamble or for one caption only by placing it in the {figure} environment where you want this:

Code: [Select all] [Expand/Collapse] [Download] (untitled.tex) Open in Overleaf

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[demo]{graphicx} % delete `demo` option in actual document
\usepackage{caption}
\captionsetup{justification=centering}
\newcommand*\picsource[1]{\textit{#1}}
\begin{document}
     \begin{figure}[]
     \centering
     \includegraphics[scale=0.45]{mm,m1,mb,iff}
     \caption{%
       Interesting rates during the crisis \\
       \picsource{Source: authors graph based on FRED data}}
     \label{mmm1iff}
     \end{figure}
\end{document}

In this code I also replaced the \textit with a semantically more meaningful command.

Regards