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I am writing a personal statement in latex. I don't want the big margin at the top of the page not big title taking a lot of space. I just like to make the layout compact but still clearly spaced with title, name and other necessary information, since there may be restriction on the number of pages. One example would be http://www.hsc.unt.edu/education/CIM/Documents/PS-Sample2_000.pdf. I wonder where to find some good latex templates or examples?

Thanks and regards!

Charles Stewart
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Tim
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  • Not quite a programming question, but some might argue. – Dmitri Nesteruk Dec 27 '09 at 19:31
  • So far all latex questions have been accepted here ... – Rook Dec 27 '09 at 22:15
  • Meta on whether latex belongs or not: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7135/where-should-a-question-about-latex-usage-go and http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12918/can-we-have-a-ruling-on-latex-on-stackoverflow – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten Dec 28 '09 at 01:48
  • The thing about the default margins in LaTeX, is that there were set with the best available usability data in mind. Generally, making you text wider will hurt the readability of your document. That makes less difference in a short blurb, but is worth keeping in mind (and yes, that means that the defaults for most word processors are erroneously wide...). To use more of the page, go to multiple columns. – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten Dec 28 '09 at 01:52
  • @dmckee: "available usability data" I don't think was in Lamport's vocabulary when he wrote latex. Mantra: latex is not a typesetting system, it is a document preparation system and that is good. The right choice of margin size gives us lots of space for scribbling margin comments, etc. Take a look at llncs.cls, to see what a journal thinks is good layout. – Charles Stewart Dec 28 '09 at 09:28

3 Answers3

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I would use the geometry package to establish the desired margins. To get the margins in your sample document, try:

\usepackage[left=1in,right=1in,top=1in,bottom=1in]{geometry}

Your next requirement was to fix the title block. LaTeX uses the internal command \@maketitle to format the title block. You can redefine this as you like. To achieve the same title block style as in the sample document, use:

\usepackage[svgnames]{xcolor}% provides colors for text
\makeatletter% since there's an at-sign (@) in the command name
\renewcommand{\@maketitle}{%
  \begin{center}
    \parskip\baselineskip% skip a line between paragraphs in the title block
    \parindent=0pt% don't indent paragraphs in the title block
    \textcolor{red}{\bf\@title}\par
    \textbf{\@author}\par
    %\@date% remove the percent sign at the beginning of this line if you want the date printed
  \end{center}
}
\makeatother% resets the meaning of the at-sign (@)

The \@title, \@author, and \@date commands will print the title, author, and date. You can use whatever formatting commands you like to set the text in bold, different colors, etc.

Put all of the above commands in the preamble of the document. The preamble is the space between \documentclass and \begin{document}.

\documentclass{article}

% this is the preamble
% put all of the above code in here

\title{Personal Statement}
\author{Tim}

\begin{document}

\maketitle% prints the title block

Emergency medicine has always been a passion of mine\ldots

\end{document}
godbyk
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  • Note that if you want to reduce margins, you may also want to reduce other tex/latex dimensions, most often the inter-paragraph space (`\parskip`), but possible also the dimensions governing layout of list environments, interline space (don't reduce this by much!), &c – Charles Stewart Dec 31 '09 at 08:59
  • That's true.. if you want the paragraphs to have no blank space between them, add `\setlength{\parskip}{0pt}` to your document after the `\maketitle` command. Also, you'll want to _increase_ the indentation of the paragraph (since the lines are longer, the indentation needs to be more prominent). The command `\setlength{\parindent}{2.5em}` will do this. – godbyk Jan 01 '10 at 18:59
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Attempt #1: I've used the following style file, which I call cramp2e, for similar purposes. It is probably not right for you, but have a look:

\oddsidemargin -1cm 
\evensidemargin -2cm 
\topmargin 1cm    
\textheight 24cm
\textwidth 19cm
\headheight 0cm
\headsep .7cm
\footskip .7cm
\parskip .2cm
\paperheight 25cm
\setlength\voffset{-.33in}
\setlength\hoffset{-.25in}

Any good?

Postscript This is for A4 size paper.

Charles Stewart
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0

A slightly less LaTeX-ey solution would be to not use the \maketitle command. A couple of times I've simply used this as my title(marginsize helps too).

Set up smaller margins:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{anysize}
\marginsize{1cm}{1cm}{1cm}{1cm}

(EDIT: 1cm might be even better..) Minimal title:

\begin{document}
\begin{center}
\section*{My Document Title}
\today
\end{center}

% content goes here

\end{document}

The result looks something like: Minimal Title

millertime
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