How can I float some text to the right of the first line of a paragraph?

Question

I'd like to put some right-aligned text on the first line of my paragraph, and have the rest of the text wrap around it, like this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed      {right-aligned text}
do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam,
quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat...

How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

Use the wrapfig package:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[showframe]{geometry}% http://ctan.org/pkg/geometry
\usepackage{wrapfig}% http://ctan.org/pkg/wrapfig
\usepackage{xparse}% http://ctan.org/pkg/xparse
\usepackage{lipsum}% http://ctan.org/pkg/lipsum
\begin{document}
\NewDocumentCommand{\rtext}{O{1} O{5em} m}{%
  \begin{wrapfigure}[#1]{r}[0pt]{#2}%
    \begin{minipage}{#2}\raggedleft#3\end{minipage}%
  \end{wrapfigure}%
}
\rtext[5][50pt]{Here is some right-aligned text}%
\lipsum[1]
\end{document}​

The above code provides \rtext[<lines>][<width>]{<stuff>} that typesets <stuff> right-aligned (actually \raggedleft) in <lines> lines of width <width> (the default is 1 line with width 5em, although this can be changed). Both <lines> and <width> are optional arguments.

geometry was used with the option showframe to show the alignment of the text. lipsum provided dummy text, while xparse provides an easy means for specifying mixed optional/mandatory arguments (and defaults).

Answer 2

Also see both answers to Float right aligned text around a text snippet in first line of a paragraph. Wrapfig does not work well with enumerate and itemize while \parshape and birectional layout (e.g. \luatextextdir and \beginR) can both handle this case as well.