19

I'm struggling to fit a wider text into an A4 page. This page isn't going to be printed as a book, it is simply for internal use, so I don't mind if the text occupies more % of the page. I've tried different commands, to various effects, but nothing would change the width of the text stripe. The best I could get was to shift the entire block of text in either direction...

These are the commands I've tried:

\setlength{\textwidth}{500pt}
\hspace{-32pt}
%% \textwidth=490pt
%% \marginparwidth=-12pt
%% \marginparsep=-12pt
%% \marginparpush=-12pt
%% \oddsidemargin=-12pt
%% \hoffset=-12pt

and variations. The template used is \documentclass[a4paper]{article}

Sorry, the choice of tags is somewhat arbitrary - I don't really know where my problem belongs. Feel free to change it.

5 Answers 5

19

Did you try package a4wide:

\usepackage{a4wide}

For a similar problem I used

\documentclass[10pt,a4paper,twocolumn]{article}
\usepackage[top=30pt,bottom=30pt,left=48pt,right=46pt]{geometry}
3
  • 9
    a4wide should not be used, as it introduces some incompatibilities with the LaTeX setup (it used to be a style option for LaTeX 2.09).
    – egreg
    Jul 1, 2012 at 10:48
  • 1
    Sorry to be a prick, but setting up LaTeX is immensely convoluted - no wonder someone found him/herself incompatible :) Considering the effort it takes to install a package, some times, it's faster to put together pixels in GIMP or similar.
    – wvxvw
    Jul 1, 2012 at 10:52
  • It's not convoluted if you use the geometry package, which comes preinstalled. Mar 3, 2019 at 17:04
8

Even though the question was already answered, for the sake of completeness, you could use the package fullpage:

\usepackage{fullpage}

and add the cm option for an even wider line length:

\usepackage[cm]{fullpage}
5

An exaggerated version:

\documentclass[11pt]{amsart}
\usepackage{lipsum} % <- For dummy text

\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{0cm}
\setlength{\evensidemargin}{0cm}
\setlength{\textwidth}{500pt}

\begin{document}
\lipsum[1-10]
\end{document}

Also, if you want to see how the document layout parameters work you can use the following for reference.

\documentclass[11pt]{amsart}
\usepackage{layout}

\begin{document}
\layout
\end{document}
1
  • Thanks for the answer, it too does the job, the one suggested by Bruno was just simpler :)
    – wvxvw
    Jul 1, 2012 at 10:49
5

If want a wider text block, but still a traditionally well-calculated and well-positioned text block, you could use the typearea package from the KOMA-Script bundle, which you can use with your normal article document class. It has an option DIV, which is used to calculate the type area. The greater the value of DIV, the wider the text block becomes. If you want typearea to find a value based on the page size, say DIV=calc.

\usepackage[DIV=11]{typearea}

Here's a table from the KOMA-Script Guide (p. 23) showing some text block widths for A4 paper:

Type-area dimensions dependent on DIV for A4

If you want to learn something about such page geometry calculation, section 2.5. Options and Macros to Influence the Page Layout (p. 21–34) of that guide would be a good read.

2
  • Thanks for the answer, it is interesting, too. But I'd have to allocate some weekend to learning how to install LaTeX packages. Last time I tried I gave up somewhere in the middle of step 3.
    – wvxvw
    Jul 2, 2012 at 11:03
  • for me, this is the preferred way to change the page layout Oct 10, 2018 at 13:23
4

Why didn't you use the geometry package ?

\usepackage[left=0.50cm, right=0.50cm, top=0.50cm, bottom=0.50cm]{geometry}

And you can change the 0.50cm with the margin you want. If all the margins are the same it is shorter to write:

\usepackage[margin=0.5cm]{geometry}
3
  • Because there is an excessive amount of settings and ways to do the same thing... I was 2 steps before trying this approach once you suggested it.
    – wvxvw
    Jul 1, 2012 at 10:55
  • 1
    If you set all margins to the same value, you can also just say \usepackage[margin=0.5cm]{geometry}. (Feel free to edit this information into your answer)
    – doncherry
    Jul 1, 2012 at 15:09
  • Thanks @doncherry I didn't know this information before, but I think it's more personalizable the way it is, don't you agree ? cuz not all margins must be the same, you can choose any value you want.
    – Mouss
    Jul 1, 2012 at 17:09

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