# Increase left margin (without setting explicitly)

I am attempting to increase the left margin of my page(s) by a specific amount (10 pt) but this functionality does not seem to exist in the geometry package. Every answer I've seen that refers to changing the left margin recommends setting it explicitly by doing

\usepackage[left=XXpt]{geometry}


or

\newgeometry{left=XXpt}


This is with the exception of one answer which talked about using the \addtolength command. This would be ideal except I have tried this with several length names formed as variations of the words "left" and "margin" as its argument but none had the desired result (moving the text out from what it was by 10 pt).

Can anyone inform me of the best/recommended method of doing this? If it involves using \addtolength, what is the name of the length given as the argument?

• Welcome to TeX SX! You might take a loo,ar the changepage package and its adjustwidth environment. – Bernard Feb 11 '18 at 21:28
• please rephrase your question. it is not very clear. do you like to change left margin only for some paragraph (image, table, equation) or for one whole page or for whole document. package geometry doesn't enable to change of existing margin for some amount. you should define new value for it. however you change margins for some amount with help of package changepage as mentioned @Bernard in his comment. but this changes has some restriction. provide please some example in form of small, but complete document, which will clarify your question. – Zarko Feb 11 '18 at 21:53
• If you are not using any lists (which includes a lot of stuff not generally thought of as lists) you can set \leftskip. If you don't need to break pages, you can use \noindent\hspace{...}\begin{minipage}{\dimexpr\textwidth-...} You might consider creating you own list environment. – John Kormylo Feb 11 '18 at 23:02

\addtolength\textwidth{-10pt}

the last line only being needed if you are using a twoside documentclass setting with separate settings for odd and even pages.