Alignment in inline math

Question

I want to enclose a tabular environment with a bracket, inside an enumerate environment, and be aligned to top.

In the following example:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}
  \item
    \(\left.\begin{tabular}{l}
      First line\\
      Second line\\
      Third line
    \end{tabular}\right\}\)
    Text
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}

I get everything centred, and not aligned to top:

If I ask tabular to be aligned at top, then still the inline math is not, so the following happens:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}
  \item
    \(\left.\begin{tabular}[t]{l}
      First line\\
      Second line\\
      Third line
    \end{tabular}\right\}\)
    Text
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}

Is there any way to tell the inline math to also align to top?

Answer 1

I'd define a new environment and use adjustbox for this. The principle is the same as in Heiko's answer.

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{adjustbox,varwidth,xparse}

\NewDocumentEnvironment{bracedrows}{m}
  {\begin{adjustbox}{valign=t}%
   $\kern-\nulldelimiterspace\left.
   \begin{tabular}{@{}l@{}}}
  {\end{tabular}\right\rbrace
   \begin{varwidth}{.5\linewidth}#1\end{varwidth}$%
   \end{adjustbox}}

\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}
\item \begin{bracedrows}{Text}
      First line\\
      Second line\\
      Third line
      \end{bracedrows}

\item \begin{bracedrows}{Text in \\ two lines}
      One\\
      Two\\
      Three
      \end{bracedrows}
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}

With varwidth you're sure your side text will occupy only the necessary width.

Answer 2

\raisebox will do. The height of the contents of \raisebox is available as \height. The tabular environment puts struts with factor \arraystretch in the rows. Since the first line of your tabular only contains normal text, the strut is very likely larger (and probably larger than the extend of the curly brace). Then the argument of \raisbox can be calculated the following way:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}
  \item
    \raisebox{%
      \dimexpr
        \arraystretch\dimexpr.7\baselineskip\relax
        -\height
      \relax
    }{%
      \(\left.\begin{tabular}{l}
        First line\\
        Second line\\
        Third line
      \end{tabular}\right\}\)
      \parbox{0.5\linewidth}{Text}%
    }%
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}

The magic number 0.7 comes from the definition of a strut, from latex.ltx:

\setbox\strutbox\hbox{%
  \vrule\@height.7\baselineskip
  \@depth.3\baselineskip
  \@width\z@
}%

A tabular adds these struts, multiplied with \arraystretch to get a more uniform line spacing.

Thus the source can be simplified without magic number to:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}
  \item
    \raisebox{%
      \dimexpr
        \arraystretch\ht\strutbox
        -\height
      \relax
    }{%
      \(\left.\begin{tabular}{l}
        First line\\
        Second line\\
        Third line
      \end{tabular}\right\}\)
      \parbox{0.5\linewidth}{Text}%
    }%
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}

Here \arraystretch\ht\strutbox is the height of the first row and \height the actual height of the tabular.

Answer 3

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{multirow,bigdelim}
\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}
  \item
   \begin{tabular}[t]{ll}
        First line & \rdelim{\}}{3}{2.5cm}[Text]\\
        Second line\\
        Third line
      \end{tabular}
\item foo
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}

Answer 4

This solution made two changes to your latter attempt:

1) It replaced the \left. \right\} syntax with the \scaleleftright{.}{}{\}} syntax of the scalerel package (with a maximum width on the scaled brace of 1.5ex); and

2) To lower the \parbox the proper number of lines, it enclosed it in a \Longunderstack from the stackengine package, with the appropriate number of leading \\ marks to skip lines.

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{scalerel}
\usepackage[usestackEOL]{stackengine}
\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}
  \item
    \scaleleftright[1.5ex]{.}{\begin{tabular}[t]{l}
      First line\\
      Second line\\
      Third line
    \end{tabular}}{\}}
    \Longunderstack{\\ \parbox[t]{0.5\linewidth}{Text}}
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}

EDIT: If you prefer the centered \parbox that egreg introduced, then this also works by changing the \parbox from [t] to [c]:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{scalerel}
\usepackage[usestackEOL]{stackengine}
\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}
  \item
    \scaleleftright[1.5ex]{.}{\begin{tabular}[t]{l}
      First line\\
      Second line\\
      Third line
    \end{tabular}}{\}}
    \Longunderstack{\\ \parbox[c]{0.5\linewidth}{Text \\in two lines}}
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}

Answer 5

Try using TikZ

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\pagestyle{empty}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations.pathreplacing}
\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}
    \item
        \begin{tikzpicture}[baseline=(X.base)]
            \node[inner sep=0pt] (X) {
                \begin{tabular}[t]{l}
                    First line\\
                    Second line\\
                    Third line
                \end{tabular}
            };
            \draw[decorate,decoration=brace] (X.north east) -- node[right=0.3em] {Text} (X.south east);
        \end{tikzpicture}

    \large
    \item
        \begin{tikzpicture}[baseline=(X.base)]
            \node[inner sep=0pt] (X) {
                \begin{tabular}[t]{l}
                    First line\\
                    Second line\\
                    Third line
                \end{tabular}
            };
            \draw[decorate,decoration=brace] (X.north east) -- node[right=0.3em] {Text} (X.south east);
        \end{tikzpicture}

    \Large
    \item
        \begin{tikzpicture}[baseline=(X.base)]
            \node[inner sep=0pt] (X) {
                \begin{tabular}[t]{l}
                    First line\\
                    Second line\\
                    Third line
                \end{tabular}
            };
            \draw[decorate,decoration=brace] (X.north east) -- node[right=0.3em] {Text} (X.south east);
        \end{tikzpicture}

    \LARGE
    \item
        \begin{tikzpicture}[baseline=(X.base)]
            \node[inner sep=0pt] (X) {
                \begin{tabular}[t]{l}
                    First line\\
                    Second line\\
                    Third line
                \end{tabular}
            };
            \draw[decorate,decoration=brace] (X.north east) -- node[right=0.3em] {Text} (X.south east);
        \end{tikzpicture}
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}