Insert Text in the align
Environment by \intertext
and \shortintertext
in LaTeX
May. 18, 2025 • Updated May. 23, 2025
In LaTeX, we can use commands \intertext
or \shortintertext
to insert text in the align
environment, and the benefit of which ways is that these two commands won’t break the equation alignments created by the align
environment1:
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\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath,mathtools}
\begin{document}
\begin{align}
x^2 + 2x &= -1
\intertext{after moving $-1$ from the right side to the left side, we have:}
x^2 + 2x + 1 &= 0
\end{align}
\begin{align}
x^2 + 2x &= -1
\shortintertext{after moving $-1$ from the right side to the left side, we have:}
x^2 + 2x + 1 &= 0
\end{align}
\end{document}
As can be seen, the line spacing between two equations is smaller when using \shortintertext
command. And note that, the \shortintertext
command is from the mathtools
package, so we should import it in the preamble in advance.
By the way, these two commands don’t work as above in the split
environment although they won’t incur errors:
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\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath,mathtools}
\begin{document}
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
x^2 + 2x &= -1
\intertext{after moving $-1$ from the right side to the left side, we have:}
x^2 + 2x + 1 &= 0
\end{split}
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
x^2 + 2x &= -1
\shortintertext{after moving $-1$ from the right side to the left side, we have:}
x^2 + 2x + 1 &= 0
\end{split}
\end{equation}
\end{document}
References