Margin notes

Margin notes provide complementary information to support the main document, or can be used for additional notes while working on a collaborative project. This article explains how to use margin notes in your LaTeX document.

[edit] Introduction

LaTeX provides a native command to add margin notes to your document

\marginpar{The new section start point will be pointed out 
by an arrow}

The text inside the braces of \marginpar{ } is printed in the right or outer margin of the page.

[edit] The marginnote package

For more flexible margin notes the package marginnote can be used

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
 
\usepackage{geometry}
\usepackage{marginnote}
 
\begin{document}
...
 
\marginnote{This is a margin note using the geometry package, set at 
3cm vertical offset to the line it is typeseted.}[3cm]
 
...

The package geometry imported by \usepackage{geometry} provide commands to manipulate the dimension of several elements in a LaTeX document. After importing that package, marginnote is imported by \usepackage{marginnote} and the you can use the command

\marginnote{This is...}[3cm]

That prints the text inside the braces, the second parameter inside brackets determines the vertical alignment relative to the line where the command is used. Negative values are allowed.

[edit] Choosing the edge for the margin notes

The default edge to print margin notes is the left for one-sided documents, outer for double-sided documents and the closest for two-column documents. You can explicitly change that.

\reversemarginpar
\marginnote{This is a margin note using the geometry package, set at 5cm 
vertical offset to the first line it is typeset.}[3cm]

The command \reversemarginpar prints the markin note in the opposite margin.

[edit] Further reading

For more information see

• Page size and margins
• Footnotes
• Lengths in LaTeX
• Single sided and double sided documents
• Multiple columns
• Headers and footers
• Paragraph formatting
• Bold, italics and underlining
• Font sizes, families, and styles
• The marginnote package documentation