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Sometimes the margins need to be changed for a particular page, paragraph, or other section of text. For example, if I'm writing a letter and want the left margin to be almost at the right side of the page for the four lines of my address, or if I am combining prose with poetry and want the poems to be indented relative to the rest of the work.
What is the best way to change both left and right margins on the fly?
There are several packages available on CTAN to do this. changepage looks promising but you can find other alternatives by searching for "margins" or "changepage" on ctan search.
With the changepage package, you can use the adjustwidth environment as follows:
\begin{adjustwidth}{left amount}{right amount}
\lipsum[2]
\end{adjustwidth}
For example, to remove 100pt from the margin on both sides, you would use
\begin{adjustwidth}{100pt}{100pt}
changepage seems to do just what I'm after, through the \begin{adjustwidth}{left change length}{right change length} environment. Thanks!
Jul 29, 2010 at 17:49
\begin{adjustwidth}{50pt}{-200pt} XXX \end{adjustwidth} adds 50pt to the left margin and subtracts 200pt from the right margin.
memoir class wiil find it already defines the adjustwidth environment, so no additional package is needed.
Here is how you can do it. Put the following in the preamble (before \begin{document})
\def\changemargin#1#2{\list{}{\rightmargin#2\leftmargin#1}\item[]}
\let\endchangemargin=\endlist
then in the text you can use
\begin{changemargin}{<arg>}{<arg>}
\end{changemargin}
where <arg> is the distance you want to include on the margin (the first one defines the right-hand side margin, and the second defines the left-hand side one).
So, for example, to add 0.5 cm to the margins on either side, you would have:
\begin{changemargin}{0.5cm}{0.5cm}
%your text here
\end{changemargin}
This is exactly how the command
\begin{quote}
\end{quote}
is defined, but with the set to 1cm. The command quote can be used without having to load any packages, by the way.
changepage?
Jul 30, 2010 at 22:32
With either one of the KOMA-Script classes or the package scrextend (which is part of KOMA-Script), you can use the addmargin environment.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{scrextend}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\begin{document}
\blindtext
% Syntax: \begin{addmargin}[<left indentation>]{<indentation>}
\begin{addmargin}[4em]{1em}
\blindtext
\end{addmargin}
\blindtext
\end{document}
Earlier versions of the geometry package did not allow to change the margins inside the document. The package gmeometric could help then.
Today geometry supports changing the margin inside the document by its commands \newgeometry{...} accepting the same key=value arguments and by \restoregeometry, see the manual of the current package version.
what about the \narrower (TeX?) command? Is it ok to use even though it does not offer a very precise control?
\documentclass[11pt]{book}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage[a4paper,top=3.5cm,bottom=3cm,left=3.6cm,right=3.6cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}
\lipsum[4]
{\narrower\lipsum[4]
\par}
\lipsum[4]
\lipsum[4]
\lipsum[4]
\lipsum[4]
{\narrower\narrower\narrower \lipsum[4]
\par}
\lipsum[4]
\end{document}
It might not answer the question directly, but:
There is a letter class:
\documentclass{letter}
for writing letters.
And for verse there is a package called...wait for it...verse:
\usepackage{verse}
As I said, it doesn't answer the specific question, but it might solve the two applications you want the solution for.
