LaTeX: Finding width of a given text and adding a horizontal space of that width

latex space mbox
Björn Marschollek picture Björn Marschollek · Nov 8, 2010 · Viewed 7.2k times · Source

I would like to add a white space of exactly the width of a given text. I could use \hspace{}, but then I need the width that given piece of text is going to use in my LaTeX document.

Another idea is to create an invisible box containing the text. Like \mbox{text}, but invisible. As I am pretty sure that I cannot just tell LaTeX not to print that particular box, I am sure that there is another solution.

Any ideas?

Answer

Konrad Rudolph picture Konrad Rudolph · Nov 8, 2010

You’re searching for \hphantom which creates a horizontal phantom box:

\par Here is some text
\par \hphantom{Here is some} more text.

Will result in something like this:

Here is some text
             more text

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