Margin notes on both left and right?

Question

I've been trying to put margin notes in both the left and the right margins at the same time. My attempts have gone something like:

Lorem{\reversemarginpar\marginpar{Left}} ipsum {\normalmarginpar\marginpar{Right}} dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.

But here both notes appear in the right margin. I would be very grateful for ideas on how to solve this.

Answer 1

You cannot change the margin for side notes within the same paragraph.

Therefore you can wait until the next paragraph to do that, or use \marginnote (found in the marginnote package) instead of \marginpar. In this way, even the same note can write different texts depending on which margin appear:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{marginnote}
\begin{document}

\newcommand\Right{\textcolor{red}{(Right) Lorem ipsum  dolor sit amet}}
\newcommand\Left{\textcolor{cyan}{(Left) Lorem ipsum  dolor sit amet}}


\section*{Two \texttt{marginpar} in the same paragraph} 

Lorem \reversemarginpar\marginpar{\Left}
ipsum  dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.\normalmarginpar\marginpar{\Right} Ut purus elit\ldots
\vspace{2cm}


\subsection*{Two \texttt{marginpar} in separate paragraphs} 

Lorem \reversemarginpar\marginpar{\Left}
ipsum  dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.\par\normalmarginpar\marginpar{\Right} Ut purus elit\ldots
\vspace{1cm}

\subsection*{Two \texttt{marginnotes} in the same paragraph} 

\renewcommand*{\raggedleftmarginnote}{\flushleft}

Lorem \reversemarginpar\marginnote{\Left} ipsum  dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.\normalmarginpar\marginnote{\Right}
Ut purus elit\ldots
\vspace{1cm}

\subsection*{One \texttt{marginnote} with and without \texttt{reversemarginpar}} 


Lorem \reversemarginpar\marginnote[\Left]{\Rigth} ipsum  dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.\normalmarginpar\marginnote[\Left]{\Right}
Ut purus elit\ldots


\end{document}

Answer 2

There is one limited time when you can get marginpars on both sides. If you are at the end of a paragraph in which you already placed a marginpar, you can \par\vspace{-\parskip}, reverse the marginpar direction and do a marginpar on the other side.

With this particular implementation, I also allow some vertical shifting to the note, with my routine

\mnote[vertical shift]{l/r}{text} 

Here is the example, where you see the note on both sides of the paragraph.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{stackengine}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{MnSymbol}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\newcommand*\mnote[3][0pt]{%
  \if l#2\reversemarginpar\def\pointer{\filledmedtriangleright}%
    \def\stackalignment{r}\fi%
  \if r#2\normalmarginpar\def\pointer{\filledmedtriangleleft}%
    \def\stackalignment{l}\fi%
  \marginpar{%
    \topinset{%
      \scalebox{1.5}{\textcolor{blue}{$\pointer$}}}{%
      \belowbaseline[-1.5\baselineskip-#1]{%
        \stackengine%
          {-5pt}%
          {\fcolorbox{blue}{white}{\parbox{1.8cm}%
            {\vspace{3pt}\raggedright#3}}}%
          {~\colorbox{white}{\sffamily Note}}%
          {O}%
          {l}%
          {F}%
          {F}%
          {S}%
        }%
      }{%
      3ex+#1}{%
      -2ex}%
  }%
}

\begin{document}
\lipsum[1-2]
this is a\mnote[2ex]{l}{some text for the mnote box} test%
\par\vspace{-\parskip}\mnote[1ex]{r}{both right and left}

\lipsum[3]
This is another test\mnote{r}{another mnote box test testing the
right side}

\lipsum[4]

\end{document}