Breaking a list into multiple columns in Latex

Question

Hopefully this is simple  I have a relatively long list where each list item contains very little text  For example      a   b   c   d   e   f   I wish to format it like so      a       d   b       e   c       f   I would rather not create a table with 2 lists as I want to be able to easily change the list without worrying about updating all the columns   What is the best way to do this in latex

User · Answer

Another option to avoid nesting two different environments (like multicols and enumerate).

The environment called tasks from the package with the same name seems to me very easy to customize thanks to a variety of options (pdf guide here).

This code:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tasks}

%\settasks{style=itemize}

\begin{document}
Text text text text text text text text text text text text 
text text text text text text text text text text text text 
text text text text text text text text text text text text.

\begin{tasks}(2)
\task[*] a
\task[*] b
\task[*] c
\task[*] d
\task[*] e
\task[*] f
\end{tasks}    

Text text text text text text text text text text text text 
text text text text text text text text text text text text 
text text text text text text text text text text text text.
\end{document}

produces this output

The package tasks was updated in August 2020 and it was originally created specifically for horizontally columned lists (see the screenshot just above here), the motivations behind this are resumed in the guide. If such arrangement of the items/tasks is acceptable, then this may be a good choice since it keeps - IMHO - the code tidy and flexible.

User · Answer

I don t know if it would work  but maybe you could break the page into columns using the multicol package    usepackage multicol    begin document   begin multicols  2  Your list here   end multicols

User · Answer

By combining the multicol package and enumitem package packages it is easy to define environments that are multi-column analogues of the enumerate and itemize environments   documentclass article   usepackage enumitem   usepackage multicol    newlist multienum  enumerate  1   setlist multienum       label  alph        before  begin multicols  2       after  end multicols      newlist multiitem  itemize  1   setlist multiitem       label  textbullet      before  begin multicols  2       after  end multicols      begin document      textsf Two column enumerate     begin multienum       item item 1      item item 2      item item 3      item item 4      item item 5      item item 6    end multienum      textsf Two column itemize     begin multiitem       item item 1      item item 2      item item 3      item item 4      item item 5      item item 6    end multiitem    end document   The output is what you would hope for

User · Answer

I ve had multenum for  Multi-column enumerated lists  recommended to me  but I ve never actually used it myself  yet   Edit  The syntax doesn t exactly look like you could easily copy paste lists into the LaTeX code  So  it may not be the best solution for your use case

User · Answer

Using the multicol package and embedding your list in a multicols environment does what you want    documentclass article   usepackage multicol    begin document   begin multicols  2   begin enumerate       item a      item b      item c      item d      item e      item f  end enumerate   end multicols   end document

[latex] Breaking a list into multiple columns in Latex

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