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I'm trying to write two equations in one line separated by some whitespace. I don't want to add the whitespace manually. Instead I was expecting that & inside an AMS align environment would do the job. However it does not work (and not even \begin{split}). Here's an example: enter image description here

and here's what I get (exported via ps2pdf): enter image description here

(In this particular example I didn't use any packages, except for amsmath which, as I understand, is loaded automatically whenever commands like \begin{align} are used)

I fail to understand where is the problem. Any suggestions?

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  • Welcome to TeX.SE! Please post the code as text instead of as an image. This would allow users here to copy-paste directly into our machines to test.
    – Troy
    Mar 6, 2018 at 16:28

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If you want to use align for this, you need four columns, two for each equation. You can insert columns for example with the button on the toolbar, highlighted in this image:

Insert column button

In the first column you write the left hand side of the first equation, in the second you write the equal sign and the right hand side of the equation. Same for the second pair of columns, LHS in column 3, = and RHS in column 4.

However, instead of align I'd use a normal displayed math environment, and add some horizontal space between the two equations. The easiest way of doing that is to write \qquad (or \quad) between the two equations:

enter image description here

After typing \qquad, hit the right arrow key, and it looks like this:

enter image description here

And in the PDF:

enter image description here

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  • Thank you. That's indeed what I currently use. I was just curious why & doesn't act as a separator even though it should according to this example (see the second code bloc under "Aligning several equations").
    – cth
    Mar 6, 2018 at 16:48
  • @cth In your example there is just one &, hence two columns, so what I'm describing (four columns, three &) is not the same thing. In the tutorial you refer to there is a & at each alignment point (the equals sign), and another & between each equation. See the answers to tex.stackexchange.com/q/159723 for descriptions on how this works.
    – Torbjørn T.
    Mar 6, 2018 at 16:57

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