# Adding a left binding offset to whole document without changing other margins

I'm currently writing my master's thesis and I'm using the scrreprt document class with its default settings for margins. Now I want to add some extra margin on the left (about 6mm maybe) for binding, but using the geometry package bindingoffset also increases the other margins by a bit.

Is there a way to only touch the left margin and leave every other margin the same? I've tried playing around with the textwidth as well but to no success.

• "only touch the left margin" means that you are printing single-sided? I.e. all left pages are blank? – remco Apr 17 '18 at 18:55
• Yes, that's correct. – Florian Apr 17 '18 at 19:07
• if you touch only the left margin, the text width will narrow by that amount, potentially changing all line and page breaks. i think you don't really want that. but if you keep the text width the same, that will require narrowing the right margin by the same amount as the increase in the left margin. if the rules for presentation require a specific right margin, and that's what you have now, you'll have to make a choice: leave things as they are, or potentially have to re-check the whole document. – barbara beeton Apr 17 '18 at 19:31
• The document is not complete, so there's no issue with changing linebreaks and pagebreaks as I'm still at a stage where I keep adding things everywhere in the document. – Florian Apr 17 '18 at 19:39
• – erik Apr 17 '18 at 22:58

## 1 Answer

For a single-sided document, \addtolength\oddsidemargin{1cm} will move everything to the right by 1cm. If you don't want the right margin to move, you have to decrease the text width by that amount with \textwidth=\dimexpr\textwidth-1cm\relax.

\documentclass{article}
\addtolength\oddsidemargin{1cm}
\textwidth=\dimexpr\textwidth-1cm\relax
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1-30]
\end{document}


In a two-sided document, there is the length \evensidemargin which can also be manipulated, as well.

• I replaced the 1cm in both commands with 0.5cm, but it didn't work. The left margin got bigger, but the right margin got smaller as a result. – Florian Apr 18 '18 at 11:02
• I think I've found my problem, I previously added these commands below \begin{document} , adding them above seems to work as far as I can see. Thanks! What is the exact difference between the two variants? – Florian Apr 18 '18 at 11:09
• @Florian By "two variants," do you mean \oddsidemargin and \evensizemargin? For a two-sided document, one of those lengths affects pages 1,3,5,... and the other affects pages 2,4,6,... – Steven B. Segletes Apr 18 '18 at 11:19
• No, I mean why the result is different when I add the \addtolength and \textwidth commands below begin{document}. Can textwidth not be modified after the beginning of the document? – Florian Apr 18 '18 at 12:01
• @Florian \textwidth cannot be modified after the \begin{document}, that is correct. – Steven B. Segletes Apr 18 '18 at 15:21