My document is creating a {blank rest of page + empty page} before a tabularx table.

Checked this thread with no dice - I couldn't solve with typical figure/table placement controls.

This is my code:

\chapter{List of Symbols}
\label{ch:AE}
\begin{tabularx}{1\textwidth}{>{\hsize=.2\hsize$}l<{{}$}>{\hsize=28\hsize}X}[H]
a & Semi-major axis of Earth \\
Ant_k & Antenna number \emph{k} \\
...
\end{tabularx}


Pictures of results are below - you can see in the third pic that the [H] ends up being read as part of the first column.

I'm not that familiar with tabularx, any ideas??

Thanks for help -DR

• The table is larger than the vertical space available in the chapter title page. – egreg Mar 4 '15 at 23:11
• @egreg -- that explains the empty page with the title, but what about the empty second page? – barbara beeton Mar 4 '15 at 23:12
• add \usepackage{ltablex} to your document – touhami Mar 4 '15 at 23:13
• @barbarabeeton Probably because the table is even larger than the space available in a page. – egreg Mar 4 '15 at 23:13
• The argument of the second \hsize should be 1.8, not 28. – Mico Mar 4 '15 at 23:17

If you don't want to change to change much of your code, simply use a longtable instead of a tabularx.

MWE:

\documentclass{book}

\usepackage{array,longtable}

\begin{document}

\appendix
\chapter{List of Symbols}
\label{ch:AE}

\begin{longtable}[l]{@{}>{$}p{0.1\hsize}<{$}@{}p{0.9\hsize}@{}}
a & Semi-major axis of Earth \\
Ant_k & Antenna number \emph{k} \\
a & Semi-major axis of Earth \\
Ant_k & Antenna number \emph{k} \\
a & Semi-major axis of Earth \\
Ant_k & Antenna number \emph{k} \\
a & Semi-major axis of Earth \\
Ant_k & Antenna number \emph{k} \\
a & Semi-major axis of Earth \\
Ant_k & Antenna number \emph{k} \\
a & Semi-major axis of Earth \\
Ant_k & Antenna number \emph{k} \\
a & Semi-major axis of Earth \\
Ant_k & Antenna number \emph{k} \\
a & Semi-major axis of Earth \\
Ant_k & Antenna number \emph{k} \\
a & Semi-major axis of Earth \\
Ant_k & Antenna number \emph{k} \\
a & Semi-major axis of Earth \\
Ant_k & Antenna number \emph{k} \\
a & Semi-major axis of Earth \\
Ant_k & Antenna number \emph{k} \\
a & Semi-major axis of Earth \\
Ant_k & Antenna number \emph{k} \\
a & Semi-major axis of Earth \\
Ant_k & Antenna number \emph{k} \\
a & Semi-major axis of Earth \\
Ant_k & Antenna number \emph{k} \\
a & Semi-major axis of Earth \\
Ant_k & Antenna number \emph{k} \\
a & Semi-major axis of Earth \\
Ant_k & Antenna number \emph{k} \\
a & Semi-major axis of Earth \\
Ant_k & Antenna number \emph{k} \\
a & Semi-major axis of Earth \\
Ant_k & Antenna number \emph{k} \\
\end{longtable}

\end{document}


Output:

Just in case you didn't know it, there are specialized packages for printing such lists. They also add the possibility of referencing the symbols throughout the document.

One of them is glossaries. Here's an example with it:

\documentclass{book}

\usepackage[acronym,nonumberlist,numberedsection]{glossaries}

\renewcommand{\acronymname}{List of Symbols}
\newglossarystyle{mystyle}{%
\setglossarystyle{long}%
\renewenvironment{theglossary}%
{\begin{longtable}[l]{@{}p{0.1\hsize}p{0.8\hsize}}}%
{\end{longtable}}%
}

\newacronym{HA}{$[H]a$}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\newacronym{ANT}{$Ant_k$}{Antenna number $k$}

\makeglossaries

\begin{document}

The symbol \acrshort{HA}

\appendix
\printglossary[style=mystyle,type=\acronymtype]

\end{document}


Output:

To obtain the output, you have to run

pdflatex myfile

makeglossaries myfile

pdflatex myfile

pdflatex myfile

If you don't have Perl installed, replace the second step with

makeindex.exe -s myfile.ist -t myfile.alg -o myfile.acr myfile.acn

The problem is that the table is too large even for being contained in a page, so first of all LaTeX pushes it on the next page because it can't be contained in the chapter title.

Then it tries to set it in the next page which again doesn't have room for it, so it pushes it to the next page and finally it gives up.

You simply don't need tabularx.

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{setspace}

\newcommand{\sym}[2]{%
\noindent
\makebox[4em][l]{$#1$}% <---- adjust to suit
#2\par
}

\onehalfspacing % you seem to be using this (avoid it, if you can)

\begin{document}

\appendix
\chapter{List of Symbols}
\label{ch:AE}

\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}

\end{document}


If your descriptions are long and may end up into more than one line, you can modify the definition of \sym to ensure the description is not split across pages:

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{setspace}

\newcommand{\sym}[2]{%
\noindent
\makebox[4em][l]{$#1$}% <---- adjust to suit
\begin{minipage}[t]{\dimexpr\textwidth-4em\relax}
#2\par\xdef\theprevdepth{\the\prevdepth}
\end{minipage}\par\prevdepth\theprevdepth
}

\onehalfspacing % you seem to be using this (avoid it, if you can)

\begin{document}

\appendix
\chapter{List of Symbols}
\label{ch:AE}

\sym{a}{1 Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{2 Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{3 Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{4 Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{5 Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{6 Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{7 Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{8 Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{9 Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{10 Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{11 Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{12 Semi-major axis of Earth Semi-major axis of Earth Semi-major axis of Earth
Semi-major axis of Earth Semi-major axis of Earth Semi-major axis of Earth
Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}
\sym{a}{Semi-major axis of Earth}
\sym{Ant_k}{Antenna number $k$}

\end{document}


• Every tabularx with a preamble of lX should be forcibly removed and replaced by a list, the world would be a better place. +1 for a small step towards world harmony. – David Carlisle Mar 4 '15 at 23:34
• This method is great except it doesn't have the same word-wrap protection that the tabularx provides. Unless I'm doing something wrong when I ran this code with "definitions" longer than 2 lines I had containment problems. – DSRadin Mar 5 '15 at 12:31
• @DSRadin No problem: the fix is quite easy; it's the advantage of using macros, so the user input has not to be changed. – egreg Mar 5 '15 at 13:01