How can I get my footnotes placed similarly in the columns of my document

Question

I just noticed that footnotes on the first and last page of a document get placed differently as demonstrated in this MWE. In this particular example, the problem shows up in a two-column document where the second column is seen by LaTeX to act in the role of the last page.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[landscape,
            twocolumn,
            margin=0.5in,
           ]{geometry}
\setlength{\columnsep}{3em}
\setlength{\columnseprule}{0.4pt}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}

This is a short section\footnote{Hello}

\pagebreak
\setcounter{footnote}{0}

This is a short section\footnote{Hello}

\end{document}

For the purposes of my document, the left and right columns should be identically typeset. So, I'm not happy that the footnotes get placed differently. What I would prefer is that both footnotes get placed as the first footnote in the left hand column.

Any ideas how to do this?

Answer 1

The \pagebreak command tells LaTeX to break the current page at the point of the command. With the optional argument, a number, you can convert the \pagebreak command from a demand to a request. (For details refer to this answer by egreg). If you don't specify the options, then number 4 is assumed and a page break is inserted immediately.

Coming to your mwe, the \pagebreak is called with only one line of text without any optional arguments. Hence, you have insisted (demanded) for a page break immediately whereas the second page/column gets shipped out naturally. If you want second column to be identical to first column, put a \pagebreak after the second column also.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[landscape,
            twocolumn,
            margin=0.5in,
           ]{geometry}
\setlength{\columnsep}{3em}
\setlength{\columnseprule}{0.4pt}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}

This is a short section\footnote{Hello}

\pagebreak
\setcounter{footnote}{0}

This is a short section\footnote{Hello}
\pagebreak %% put here
\end{document}

You may play with the optional arguments (\pagebreak[1], number from 0-4).

However using \newpage or \clearpage will give you different results as in these cases, the page is broken at the end.

May be useful:

1. pagebreak-vs-newpage

2. when-do-i-need-invoke-clearpage-manually