# How to begin an align environment with an inline equation?

I want to write the following in LaTeX (without the horizontal ruled lines): where the equals signs are vertically aligned with each other.

I found this question and this one which both suggest using the aligned environment. I tried the following:

\documentclass[a4paper, 12pt]{report}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\begin{document}
By the quotient rule,
\begin{aligned} f'(x)&=\frac{v(x)u'(x)-u(x)v'(x)}{(v(x))^2}\\ &=\frac{(2x-2)(2)-(2x+2)(2)}{(2x-2)^2}\\ &=\frac{4x-4-4x+4}{(2x-2)^2} \end{aligned}
\end{document}


But it gave me this instead of what I wanted.

Is there any way to begin the aligning with an inline equation like what I wrote?

• Use \begin{aligned}[t]. – muzimuzhi Z Feb 2 at 2:09
• @muzimuzhiZ This works perfectly, and to me seems closer to what I was asking for than using \text. Only issue is that text afterwards still appears in a weird position (can be fixed with \\ ), but since I forgot to include the text afterwards in my question this works fine. – James A Feb 2 at 2:40

\documentclass[a4paper, 12pt]{report}
\begin{aligned} \text{By the quotient rule,}\quad f'(x)&=\frac{v(x)u'(x)-u(x)v'(x)}{(v(x))^2}\\ &=\frac{(2x-2)(2)-(2x+2)(2)}{(2x-2)^2}\\ &=\frac{4x-4-4x+4}{(2x-2)^2} \end{aligned}

• Oh yes, using \text, don't know how I didn't think of that! Thanks! – James A Feb 2 at 2:27