# Can I not use the align & operator within a \frac?

This code is causing LaTeX to throw an error: Missing } inserted. It appears to be because I put a & inside a \frac command (on line 4). I feel as though it should be possible to accomplish my goal.

\begin{align*}
A & + B \\
\frac{A}{C} & + \frac{B}{C} \\
\frac{A & + B}{C}
\end{align*}


Has anyone been frustrated by this before? How did you get around it?

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You can't put alignment points within the \frac. –  Peter Grill Jan 16 '12 at 19:22
align work like an array environment. So the separation with & is used to separate cells. In this case it isn't possible to because the cell isn't a closed object. –  Marco Daniel Jan 16 '12 at 19:26

The & in the align environment are used to specify alignment points. These can not be within a \frac. So, depending on if you want to align on the right hand side of the expression, or on the + sign, you would use the code below to produce:

The second situation is a bit trickier. The way I solved it was to use \makebox to reserve a space equal to the largest text that goes in there and use the [c] option to center the text. However, if you want all three + to be aligned, then note that the spacing on either side of the = is not identical.

In this particular situation, you could choose to not align the + sign of the first expression, and then the spacing for all three = would be correct (as in the third image above). So it is a trade off between aligning the three +, or getting the correct spacing on either side of the equal.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{calc}

\begin{document}
If you want the right side aligned:
\begin{align*}
A &+ B \\
\frac{A}{C} &+ \frac{B}{C} \\
\frac{A + B}{C} &+
\end{align*}
%
\newcommand*{\LargeFrac}{\frac{A}{C} + \frac{B}{C}}%
\newcommand*{\Center}[1]{\makebox[\widthof{$\LargeFrac$}][c]{$\displaystyle #1$}}%
%
\noindent
If you want the plus sign aligned:
\begin{align*}
\Center{A + B} & = x\\
\Center{\frac{A}{C} + \frac{B}{C}} & = x \\
\Center{\frac{A + B}{C}} & = x
\end{align*}
%
If you want correct spacing around the equal:
\begin{align*}
A + B & = x\\
\Center{\frac{A}{C} + \frac{B}{C}} & = x \\
\Center{\frac{A + B}{C}} & = x
\end{align*}
\end{document}

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Maybe you can use a derivation of array:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{array}
\begin{document}
\begin{align*}
\begin{array}{@{}r@{\mathrel{+}}l@{}}
A & B \\
\frac{A}{C} & \frac{B}{C} \\
\scriptstyle A  & \scriptstyle B \\[-2.5pt]\cline{1-2}
\multicolumn{2}{c}{\scriptstyle C}
\end{array}
\end{align*}
\end{document}
`

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