Minipages

Minipages are a LaTeX construct used to create small, self-contained blocks of content within a document. They are useful for arranging material side by side or for keeping a group of content together with a fixed width that does not affect surrounding text flow.

In LaTeX, a minipage is created with the minipage environment, typically as \begin{minipage}{<width>} ... \end{minipage}. The width is specified as a TeX length, commonly a fraction of \textwidth, such as 0.5\textwidth. An optional position argument [t], [c], or [b] controls vertical alignment relative to the surrounding baseline. Content inside the minipage is typeset as normal, including paragraphs, lists, figures, and tables.

Because a minipage is not a floating object, it does not automatically move to a new page or float to a different position. It is treated as a single box and must be placed in the text flow. It is often used to create side-by-side figures or to group content with a shared caption by placing multiple minipages within an enclosing environment such as figure or table. When placing several minipages on one line, horizontal space between them can be adjusted with spacing commands to achieve the desired layout.

Limitations include that a minipage cannot span multiple pages. It is primarily a layout tool for fixed-width blocks within a page, and more complex multi-column layouts may require additional packages such as multicol or paracol.