1

Here's what I'd like to do. Place a centered image, and then have two columns of text centered below it. I did the following:

\begin{center}
\includegraphics{image}

\begin{multicols}{2}
lots of text
\end{multicols}
\end{center}

All that happens is that the image is centered, but the two column block is aligned left. I tried variants where I used two center environments, one for the image and one for the multicol. I also tried using \centering instead, and even tried encapsulating the multicol inside a minipage. All to no avail.

It's a minor issue, but it's driving me nuts. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Update: Here's an MWE:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{multicol}
\usepackage[demo]{graphicx}
\begin{document}
\begin{center}
  \includegraphics[width=3in]{plan}
\end{center}
    \begin{multicols}{2}
        \begin{enumerate}
\item 1
\item 2
\item 3
\item 4
\item 5
\item 6
\item 7
\item 8
\item 9
\item 10
\item 11
\item 12
\item 13
\end{enumerate}
    \end{multicols}
\end{document}

which produces this:Example of bad centering

Improve this question
5
  • As always a minimal working example (MWE) would be nice so that people can see for themselves and test their solution.
    – Martin Scharrer
    May 12, 2011 at 19:55
  • I'll do that. however, my example has an image in it, and I don't know how to create the nifty image snippets that others on this forum seem able to do.
    – Suresh
    May 12, 2011 at 19:57
  • You can load graphicx with the demo option to have images replaced with a black box.
    – Martin Scharrer
    May 12, 2011 at 20:00
  • Do you want the text in the multicols to be centered (ragged on both sides) or the whole block placed centered relative to the outer text? The latter implies that the multicols width is smaller then the width of the outer text.
    – Martin Scharrer
    May 12, 2011 at 20:02
  • the latter. I'd like the block centered with respect to the page, like the image.
    – Suresh
    May 12, 2011 at 20:04

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
3

The multicols needs to be smaller than the outer text so it can be centered. This can be done by using the minipage environment with a smaller width then \textwidth. If it has the same width it is technically already centered when printed with justification. I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for. Using a enumeration environment with short text like in your MWE is not a good way to show that. Enumerations are differently aligned than normal text.

Here my code which includes some normal text and an enumeration. The blindtext package is used to insert some dummy text.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{multicol}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage[demo]{graphicx}
\begin{document}
\blindtext
\begin{center}
  \includegraphics[width=3in]{plan}
  \begin{minipage}{3in}
    \begin{multicols}{2}
        \blindtext
    \end{multicols}
  \end{minipage}
  \begin{minipage}{3in}
    \begin{multicols}{2}
        \begin{enumerate}
            \item 1
            \item 2
            \item 3
            \item 4
            \item 5
            \item 6
            \item 7
            \item 8
            \item 9
            \item 10
            \item 11
            \item 12
            \item 13
        \end{enumerate}
    \end{multicols}
  \end{minipage}
\end{center}
\blindtext
\end{document}

Result

Improve this answer
0
1 
\begin{trivlist}
\item[]\begin{minipage}{\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics{image}
\end{minipage}

\begin{multicols}{2}
lots of words
\end{multicols}
\end{trivlist}

The trivlist environment is just to insert some space above and below the whole construction. If you need indented margins for the two column text, use 

\begin{quote}
\begin{minipage}{\linewidth}
\centering
\includegraphics{image}
\end{minipage}

\begin{multicols}{2}
lots of words
\end{multicols}
\end{quote}

possibly changing \leftmargin and \rightmargin.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .