Todonotes appear directly over text in double column document (revtex 4.2)

Question

Here's my MWE

\documentclass[%
reprint,
amsmath,amssymb,
aps,
]{revtex4-2}

\setlength{\marginparwidth}{2cm}
\usepackage{todonotes}
\usepackage{blindtext}

\begin{document}

\title{Example Title}

\author{Someone}

\maketitle

\section{Introduction}
\blindtext
\blindtext
\todo{lets try an example}
\blindtext
\end{document}

And here's the output:

As you can see, the note displays 'over' the left column, hiding some part of the text. That is unacceptable for me since all the examples and documentation I see for todonotes says that the notes should appear in the margin.

How do I resolve this? What's causing this problem? I checked that simply using \documentclass[twocolumn]{article} corrects this issue, but I need the formatting provided by revtex; I also need the todonotes package particularly (my supervisor insists on it) so is there any workaround (even if untidy) to this issue?

Answer 1

The issue arises due to the conflict between how todonotes understands which column your note belongs to, and the way revtex4-2 balances the two columns in the last page. When revtex4-2 balances the two columns in the last page, they are both considered left columns. That's why any notes in the last page will appear to the left of the column, regardless of which side it belongs to.

If your priority is to use both revtex4-2 and todonotes, then here is one workaround:

1. Add nobalancelastpage option to revtex4-2. This will disable balancing the last page.
2. If balancing the last page is a priority for you, you will have to do it manually by adding \addtolength{\textheight}{-8cm} somewhere before the last page, and fine-tune the value till the page is balanced.

Here is a-somewhat MWE.

\documentclass[%
reprint,amsmath,amssymb,aps,
nobalancelastpage % <--- Disable balancing last page
]{revtex4-2}

\setlength{\marginparwidth}{1.5cm}
\usepackage{todonotes}
\usepackage{blindtext}

\begin{document}
\title{Example Title}
\author{Someone}
\maketitle

\section{Introduction}
\blindtext \todo{Left}
\Blindtext \todo{Right}
\addtolength{\textheight}{-13cm} % <-- balance the very next page
\blindtext
\blindtext \todo{So balanced}
\blindtext 
\blindtext \todo{Much wow}
\blindtext

\end{document}