# How to align item labels?

When I try to answer the a matching question in my assignment, I find that my final PDF of the four answers shown above are not aligned with each other. It seems that the lowercase "b" is taking more space than "a", "c","d".

Does anybody know how I can solve this problem?

• Load enumitem package and use \begin{enumerate}[label=\alpha*.]\item B \item C \end{enumerate}. – Sigur Apr 19 '15 at 7:45
• Hi and welcome, you are doing a lot of stuff by hand, for example manual line breaks and manual spacing. In general, this should be avoided. – Johannes_B Apr 19 '15 at 7:48
• @Johannes_B, Thank you for answering my questions. But how can I avoid doing those manually, and can you tell me how I can solve this problem? – David Apr 19 '15 at 8:00
• @Sigur Do I have to this package every time when I try to type something? I do no see any other formatting problem without using this package. What is actually happening to my Tex? Also, I really appreciate your help. – David Apr 19 '15 at 8:02
• @Sigur Thank you very much. I used the enumerate package and solved my problem. – David Apr 21 '15 at 6:45

Please always post the code not just an image of code.

You only showed a tiny fragment but it shows that you are missing most of the features of latex to automate numbering, layout and cross references.

Possibly something like the following would be a reasonable markup, then the layout can be adjusted if needed without changing the markup, which is a major advantage of a system like latex, but is defeated if you have explicit font changes and spacing commands and manual numbering in the document.

\documentclass{article}
\renewcommand\theenumi{\alph{enumi}}% a b c
\newtheorem{problem}{Problem}
\renewcommand\figurename{Plot}
\renewcommand\thefigure{\Alph{figure}}% A B C
\begin{document}

\begin{problem}
Pick one of these:
\begin{enumerate}
\item B
\item C
\item D
\item A
\end{enumerate}
\end{problem}

\begin{problem}
something\ldots

In Plot~\ref{zz} which shows\ldots

in Plot~\ref{www} which shows\ldots

\begin{figure}[htp]
\centering
\begin{picture}(10,10)
\put(0,10){\line(1,-1){10}}
\end{picture}
\caption{something\label{zz}}
\end{figure}

\begin{figure}[htp]
\centering
\begin{picture}(10,10)
\put(0,0){\line(1,1){10}}
\end{picture}

\caption{something\label{www}}
\end{figure}

\end{problem}

\end{document}

• It would really be better if the problem texts are not italic. – barbara beeton Apr 19 '15 at 12:58
• @barbarabeeton yes, although I was trying to get the markup half way reasonable before looking at the output. amsthm package can be used to specify fonts and other aspects of the problem environment. – David Carlisle Apr 19 '15 at 13:04
• @DavidCarlisle It is very kind of you read my crappy question and answer the question in such details. I really appreciate your help. I am a beginner so I make mistakes all the time. But thanks to your help, I solved the problem yesterday. – David Apr 21 '15 at 6:50
• @barbarabeeton Now I have solved the problem. Thanks for helping me. – David Apr 21 '15 at 6:51